


1.11 The Mabel Who Knew Too Much

by William_Easley



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: F/M, Hitchcock, Humor, Mystery, Parody, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-11 03:51:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 35,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10454355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/William_Easley/pseuds/William_Easley
Summary: Like an old movie with odd plot twists and unexpected characters, this episode in the life of Pacifica Northwest unreels with danger and puzzles galore that only a crack detective team, like Dipper, Mabel, and Wendy, could possibly solve. Or possibly not. You know how these things go.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own the show Gravity Falls or any of the characters. I gain no money from writing fanfiction, and do it only for my own enjoyment and, I hope, to amuse fellow fans.

**The Mabel Who Knew Too Much  
By William Easley**

**July-Early August, 2013 ******

****

* * *

 

****Chapter 1: Suspicious** **

**** _Good evening. Welcome to the little town of Gravity Falls, Oregon. It is a hotbed of adventure, terror, crime, and the unknown. In fact it's quite a cozy little place, very similar to your own home town. But, as we shall see, the goings-on in Gravity Falls are sufficient to satisfy anyone's thirst for mystery . . . well, ALMOST anyone._

* * *

 

****From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** ** _Wednesday, July 31—Even after her noisy sleepover, Mabel was up this morning earlier than I was. She greeted me as I came downstairs, dressed for my work-out and run with Wendy: "Got any muscles yet, Dipper?"_

_"Working on some," I told her casually. I would have invited her to join us, but she sat at the breakfast table gobbling down some chocolate cereal covered with what I assume was maple syrup instead of milk._

_As I headed for the door, she called out, "Oh, hey, have you seen Mr. Stringfellow around? I've misplaced him."_

_"Your marionette?" I asked. That was a new phase of Mabel's craft hobby—sock puppets she'd got tired of, but marionettes, those puppets worked by strings, were more of a challenge. Mr. Stringfellow was extremely weird-looking, very tall and spindly, with a too-big round foam-plastic ball for a head. His skeleton was a bunch of wooden dowels, cut to various lengths and strung together. Mabel had dressed him in a gaudy red, yellow, blue, and white clown outfit, but she was still trying to get the balance right and couldn't yet make him walk with the controller and strings. His legs kept getting tangled with his neck and shoulders and each other. I'd seen her working on the puppet recently, but—"Haven't seen him lying around," I told her._

_She thanked me and said she'd hunt him up. So I went outside. Wendy had spent the night in the Shack, at her very first sleepover with Mabel, Grenda, Candy, and Pacifica. I knew because their noise up above my head (Mabel and I always swap rooms on sleepover nights) kept me awake until about two._

_But Wendy was already out in the yard doing modified crunches and looking bright and cheerful in her gray T-shirt and red shorts. She greeted me, we did our warm-up exercises and stretches, and then we put on our sweatbands and started our run. We're up to forty-five minutes now, and we're doing very close to three miles. Wendy tells me my legs are getting some shape to them finally—she can see a little bulge in my upper calves, and she says my thighs are looking more muscular, too. I guess the exercise is paying off, and I do feel better—I have more energy and more stamina, although after such a long run I'm always a little achy._

_Gideon Gleeful was downtown and waved to us. After we passed him, Wendy said, "Hey, Dip, one day you oughta tell him how you, like, saved his life."_

_"Don't think so," I gasped. "Mostly 'cause I was the one who nearly killed him in the first place."_

_"Is Gideon still hittin' on Mabel?"_

_I had to space out the answer over about a tenth of a mile, because I was getting winded: "Nope. They're sort of casual friends, have been since Weirdmageddon, when he switched to our side, but he's not focused on her any longer. He's got a crush on his sixth-grade teacher now."_

_"We should send her a sympathy card."_

_That got me laughing, and we had to slow down a little bit, so we didn't quite make our three miles—but we did over two and three-quarters._

_So we got back to the shack, hit the showers—separately, I mean, though I kind of daydream—but never mind all that. I had some breakfast, oatmeal and a banana and milk. Wendy had a banana and an orange and her one cup of coffee for the day, and then she helped Melody and Soos get the Shack in shape for its 9:30 opening._

_I didn't have anything planned, for a change. I'd just had a weird adventure with an interdimensional freak called the Horroracle, and I wanted some R &R, so I figured I'd hang with Mabel. _

_Didn't see Grenda, Candy, or Pacifica around, so I figured they'd gone home already. And Mabel wasn't in the Shack, so I went outside—just in time to hear her scream._ **  
**

* * *

  
"Nooo! No, no, no! He's dead! Oh, Gompers, why?"

Dipper came running to the back yard of the Shack. "What's wrong?"

"Look at what Gompers did! He committed puppetcide!"

Dipper stopped close to Mabel out near the fringe of the woods. Gompers, the goat, was nonchalantly munching on a severed leg. The remains of Mr. Stringfellow lay scattered about, the victim of Gompers's appetite. They no longer looked remotely like a puppet. "Can you fix it?" Dipper asked.

Mabel gave him a glare. "Doy! It'll be quicker and easier to start completely from scratch! I have to face the facts, Dipper. Mr. Stringfellow is—gone. The only thing that we can do now is give him a decent burial."

Mabel's definition of "decent" meant something not far short of a state funeral: Mr. Stringfellow had to have a coffin, of course, and a suitable tombstone, and there had to be music and a eulogy and—the whole nine yards of string, in other words. Dipper rummaged through the junk room, where surplus boxes and wrappings for the Mystery Shack merch got tossed, until he came across a box about the right size, a foot and a half long, four inches deep, and four inches wide. Though it was cardboard, it was covered with paper in a faux woodgrain pattern. He had no idea what had been packaged in it.

In the gift shop, Mabel was distributing black armbands to Soos, Melody, Abuelita, and Wendy. "The services are at noon," she told them in the solemn, quiet tones of a funeral director.

"We'll make time for it, Hambone," Soos said kindly.

"Will this be a good coffin?" Dipper asked, holding out the box.

"Yes," Mabel said with a sad smile. "Mr. Stringfellow was always partial to fake walnut."

Soos cut a plank to make a headstone, and Dipper painted it stone-gray with quick-drying tempera paint before adding Mr. Stringfellow's name in black.

Then while Mabel did the mortuary work of stuffing the foam head-ball, the still-moist chewed coat and pants, the frayed and limp strings, and the dismembered dowels into the box—"I don't think we can have an open-casket viewing," she said sadly—Dipper got on his laptop and looked for some appropriate music. He found a possibility and ripped the tune as an mp3, sending it to his phone.

When Dipper came back downstairs, he found that Mabel had called her friends. Grenda, Candy, and Pacifica milled around in the parlor. They were all dressed in black, complete with veils, and they murmured condolences to Mabel, who sat in the armchair and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. Pacifica hugged him tightly and said, "I'm so sorry for your sister's loss."

"Uh—thanks?"

"If there's anything we can do to help, just let us know."

"That—that's very kind."

"We're here to offer her emotional support. If there's anything—"

"Well—one tiny thing."

"Just name it, Dipper."

"Uh—could you please let go of me?"

Pacifica finally broke the hug. "I will _never_ understand _boys_ ," she said in an irritated tone.

The Shack had quite a few tourists that morning between ten and twelve. Soos led two Mystery Tours, and Wendy chalked up a good many sales—not a record, but not at all bad for mid-week. As usual, the buses left before noon—there was always about an hour's lull, and Abuelita had already suggested that they add on a room that would serve as a fast-food restaurant to attract more midday traffic—and at twelve Soos put up a sign on the door: "Closed for a family funeral. Will re-open in thirty minutes. Stick around, dawgs."

Dipper got to be the pallbearer. Mabel insisted he wear the black suit that he—or Bill Cipher, rather, in his body—Bipper—had worn the previous year to her puppet show. Dipper hated it, not only because he despised the memory of Bill in his body and in that suit, but also because he had grown. Now the suit was tight across the shoulders, and the sleeves and pant legs were inches too short for him—but Mabel had him wear black socks and said that would hide it.

He also was the band. And the gravedigger—he had already excavated a little hole in a soft spot of ground not too far from the Bottomless Pit.

Just as they formed up to make the trip out to the grave site, a single car pulled up in the parking lot—a handsome, classic 1950s-era Chrysler Crown Imperial, shining black and in immaculate condition. A stout, balding man in black got out and noticed the group. He came over and asked, "I beg your pardon. Is the Museum closed?"

"Yes, sir," Soos said. "But it won't be for long, if you'd care to wait, dude sir. We've got to bury Mr. Stringfellow for Mabel."

"My condolences," the man said, and Dipper belatedly realized that his measured speech resulted from a cultured British accent. "A pet, my dear?"

"No," Mabel said. "A puppet."

The man gave a courtly nod, almost a bow. "Then I shall not intrude."

"Play, Maestro," Mabel told Dipper.

He pressed _play_ on his phone, and the music began, a perky and yet solemn tune.

"Ah," the visitor murmured. "Gounod, 'Funeral March of a Marionette.' Quite appropriate. I have always liked that melody."

"Come along," Mabel said.

"Thank you, no. I'm only here briefly."

So the rest of them walked to the back of the shack and out to the grave. Dipper turned off the music and Mabel said, "Family and friends, we are here to commemorate the passing of our beloved Mr. Stringfellow. Alas, we hardly knew ye. Chunk him in, Dipper, and cover him up."

And so the solemnities were properly attended to.

Though the whole thing lasted less than fifteen minutes, the black limo was gone when they got back and Soos re-opened the Shack. "Huh," he said. "Maybe that dude will come back later. Or maybe he just made, like, a cameo appearance."

The girls changed out of their funeral clothes and had lunch together, laughing and chattering away—just as if the funeral had never happened and as if they hadn't spent the previous night doing almost exactly the same thing. Mabel asked Pacifica how things were, and she shrugged. "Dad's making money already on those wifi hotspot mudflaps, so he's happy. Mom's happy that he's not grumpy. Everything's OK, I guess. Oh, my cousin's, like, coming to visit later this week. He's from upstate New York."

"How old is he?" Grenda asked. "Is he fair game?" When Candy gave her an exasperated look, Grenda said, "What? Marius and I aren't exclusive, you know!"

"I think it is time you gave someone else a chance, perhaps," Candy retorted. Under her breath, she muttered, " _Nae jasin-ii sonyeon-eul eodgi wihae dangsin-eul bunswaehaeyahanda_."

"He's like, fifteen I think," Pacifica said. "I don't know, maybe even older. I haven't ever even seen him, to tell you the truth. The few times we visited his family, he was always off at boarding school."

"Well, we'll be excited to meet him," Mabel assured her. "We'll make him feel right at home."

Looking faintly skeptical, Pacifica glanced around the parlor. Though under Soos's management the Shack had been brought up to code—it no longer really qualified as a hovel—it wasn't exactly a luxury spot. "I'm sure he'll find this place very . . . quaint," Pacifica said, after a brief search for the right word.

"Guys?" Wendy called from the gift shop. "I think Pacifica's ride's here."

"Oh," Pacifica said, hopping up. "That's right, Mother wants to take me shoe shopping this afternoon. Come on, Grenda, Candy. Welly will be happy to give you girls a lift home."

They said their goodbyes, and Mabel saw them to the door. Wendy, leaning on the counter, asked, "So what's up next, Mabes? You plannin' to replace Mr. Stringfellow?"

"Yeah, eventually," Mabel said with a sigh. "As soon as the grief heals, you know." She perked up. "So, tomorrow, I guess."

The phone rang, and Wendy reached for it. "The Mystery Shack, come for the mystery, stay for the weirdness. How may I direct your call?"

A pause, and she frowned. "No, dude, she was, but she just left. . . . Her chauffeur came and picked her up. . . . Home, I think. . . . Well—huh." She hung up. "Dude just cut off on me. I didn't like his voice, anyhow. Creepy."

"Who was it?" Mabel asked.

"Dunno. Wanted Pacifica, seemed mad when I told him she'd already gone." She looked thoughtful. "He said something that rubbed me the wrong way, though. When he asked where she was and I told him I thought she was headin' home, he said—aw, it's nothin'."

"No," Mabel insisted, "what did he say?"

Wendy frowned. "He said, 'I'll grab her there, then.'"

Mabel frowned. "That sounds . . . suspicious."

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

"OK."

Mabel's eyes narrowed, and she slowly repeated, "Suspicious. . . ."

* * *

 


	2. The Birdz

* * *

**Mabel's Investigation Log:** _Stardate Today, 13030 PM, DST. I totally don't know what that means._

_After Wendy told me of her strange telephone conversation with Mr. Unknown, I called Pacifica to make sure she was OK, and she was, but she and her mom were in a shoe store and Pacifica spent twelve hours and nine minutes describing all the shoes she was looking at. OK, maybe it wasn't that long, but it sure felt like it._

_So anyway, it didn't look like this line of investigation was going anywhere, so I had a post-lunch snack of Gummy Armadillos and root beer and then took a big picnic basket with some bologna and cheese sandwiches, boiled eggs, and soda out into the woods because the Sev'ral Timez guys are still hanging around out there. I invited Dipper to come along, too, but he said, "Can't stand their music. I'll hang out with Wendy."_

_Methinks they doth hang out a lot-eth! Match in the making?_

_Anyway, the Sev'ral Timez guys came scampering when I called them, and they really enjoyed their lunch (they tell me they usually forage in garbage cans and have to fight with McGucket's ex-wife sometimes—she's a raccoon—so they're grateful for the occasional sandwiches and sodas. I won't repeat the crude jokes they made about the way the boiled eggs smelled, but they were funny)._

_I also carried scissors, disposable razors, moisturizer, deodorant, and soap, 'cause they get pretty hairy and smelly out in the woods all the time. But they no longer sleep out in the wild. They found the Multibear's cave and he let them move in with him, because he is the only ones of his kinds and they get lonely. That doesn't look right, but like I told Mrs. Beeders in English class last year, pronouns are confusing when you're writing about a bear with three bodies and eight heads._

_Oh, by the way, the heads have learned to harmonize, and Sev'ral Timez have written a bunch of new songs that the Multibear can join in on: "It's Cold in the Cave of Your Heart, Girl," "Heads Up for Love," and "Snuggling into Your Fur." They sang a few of these for me. Yeah . . . . Creeped me out._

_Anywho, after I trimmed their hair and they had shaved, my Sev'ral Timez boys had a nice bath in a swimming hole along Crooked Creek, and I totally watched them. Man, if I could sell tickets to the girls in town—but that would be wrong._

_The guys were a little shy at first, but I explained that I had learned all about male anatomy from a book Grunkle Stan read to me (long story short, look out for the pituitary gland) and from spending some time in Dipper's bod. Then they toweled off and I showed them how to snap towels at each other's butts, so they're getting to be more and more civilized, just like normal boys._

_But then after they had dressed again, Chubby Z. said, "Yo, Mabel girl, we thank you most kindly for the food and the rad makeovers, girl, but answer us a question, yo: What is with these cray-cray birdies today?"_

_"What birdies?" I asked._

_Deep Chris said, "Like, all the fowls of the forest, girl. As of this morning, they congregate and conglobulate in ways most bewildering."_

_"I don't know what you mean."_

_Greggy C. said, "C'mon, my brothers, let us show the young lady."_

_So they took me up onto a hill where I guess Manly Dan had chopped down most of the trees, so the seedlings were only knee-high, and we could look out far across the valley. Sure enough, there was like a dark cloud of birds in the sky, just circling and circling over one particular spot, miles away. From that distance it looked ominous, almost like a funnel cloud._

_That reminds me of funnel cake! That reminds me of the fair Grunkle Stan threw when I won Waddles! Waddles!_

_And that makes me sad, 'cause Mom says Waddles absolutely has to stay here when we go back home for school. He's too big for the house, and the neighbors complain when he's out in the yard, though he looks a whole lot handsomer than Mr. Momphreys next door when he plunges his fat hairy old bod into their hot tub, which I can totally see over the privacy fence, plain as day, when I climb up onto the roof of our house with binoculars._

_But anyway Soos has promised to take good care of Waddles and to let us see each other on FaceChat every night, so I guess losing your pig is just part of growing up, like in the book about the psychotic spider which I was supposed to have read in the fourth grade._

_Where was I? Oh, right the birds, or as the guys called them, "The birdz."_

_Hah. The buzzing sound at the end of that word reminds me of "birds and bees," and that reminds me of you-know-what. Guess Wendy was right about those hormones! Hi-yo!_

_So I was saying, to my shock, I realized that those distant birds were flocking right over Pacifica's new house! I mean, I could tell because when Pacifica and I swapped bodies, I spent some time there! And though I have absolutely forgiven Pacifica and consider her one of my Gravity Falls friends now, I kinda got the giggles when I thought she might return from shoe shopping and step out of their limo only to be buried under a shower of bird droppings._

_But this cloud of fowls was just adding to the mystery. Why are those birdz so interested in the Northwest farm? I have to find out! Stay tuned! Mabel Pines, Private Eye-ess, is on the case!_

_Right after the guys and I do our braid train thing._

_Wait, wait, I think Private Eye-ette is better. No, I don't. Never mind._

* * *

When Mabel got back to the Shack, Soos said, "Oh, there you are, Hambone. Look, dude, can you do me a solid? See, tomorrow I have to drive Melody over to Portland for her checkup and MRI and all. Abuelita's goin' with us, and we're gonna be gone for like, most of the day. I totally trust Wendy to run the Shack while we're away, but she's gonna need help. Dipper will be Mr. Mystery, while Wendy drives the tram for the Mystery Tours. Will you hang around an' work the register in the gift shop?"

"Sure!" Mabel said. "Didn't I run the Shack for seventy-two hours last summer? I'll be glad to pitch in! And I won't let Dipper slack off on the job, either."

Wendy sauntered in from the gift shop, now empty of tourists. "Cool," she said. "We'll make him clean the ladies' room. That oughta blow his mind!"

"Hey, Wendy, are you busy?" Mabel asked.

"Not especially. Wednesday afternoons are, like, dead."

"Soos, can Wendy be released from work long enough to drive me over to Pacifica's house? There's something I need to check on."

"Uh, sure, Hambone. We'll be closing up in a couple hours anyhow, so take the rest of the day off, Wendy."

Wendy stared at Soos with intense eyes. "With pay, right?" Wendy asked. "Huh? Huh? Huh?"

Soos backed off a step. "Dude, don't freak me out, please! With full pay, yeah, of course."

"Cool. Hang on, Mabes, let me get my stuff. Wanna scare up Dipper to go along with us? He's around somewheres."

"Nah, let's make it a girls' trip," Mabel said.

"Gotcha."

They climbed into her old forest-green 1973 Dodge Dart and headed out on the six-mile drive. On the way, Mabel told Wendy about the odd behavior of the birds.

"Huh," Wendy said. "'Course it may just be they're gettin' ready to migrate. They do that every year, fly down south for the winter, and you see them gatherin' up into big flocks before they take off. Well, a bunch of them do. Some stay here the whole year around."

When they came around a curve, though, and got a clear view of the sky some two miles away, Wendy said, "Whoa! I see what you mean, Mabes! There's like a whole ginormous swarm of 'em—and I don't think they're all even from the same species! There's, like, some white ones in among 'em. Gulls?"

"I think so," Mabel replied, peering out the windshield. "Yeah, and look, there's mostly small birds, but I see some bigger ones—hawks, I think, or maybe vultures—right in with them!"

Mabel pulled out her phone and snapped several photos and a short video, then, tongue sticking out of her mouth, she forwarded the pictures. "There. I sent the photographic evidence to Ford and Dipper. Maybe they can suggest something."

They turned in at the drive, but saw that the Northwest family limo was not yet back. "Oh, man," Wendy said. "When Pacifica shops, she shops like Attila the Hun."

"What does that mean?"

Wendy shrugged. "Mm-uh. Just sounded appropriately dorky."

Mabel giggled. "Wendy, word of advice: You can't pull off dorky."

"Think not?"

"Nope."

"Well—hm. Tell you what, I'm gonna go back to the highway an' pull off on the shoulder until Pacifica and her mom get back. I mean, this ain't a new car, but I don't like cleaning bird poop off it."

"Good idea."

Wendy found a place broad enough to pull off under the protection of some roadside trees, and the two girls settled back. "Stake-out," Mabel said. "Now . . . we watch."

"Guess so."

Mabel leaned back and yawned. "Was that like his pet name?"

"What?"

"Attila the Hon. Short for 'honey?'"

With a chuckle, Wendy admitted, "You're asking the wrong girl, Mabel. I like slept through most of history last spring. That's why I'm repeating it. Huh. 'Honey.' Never thought of that."

"Use it in your next essay for history," Mabel suggested. "Betcha you'll get points for creativity. I always do."

"Mm, high school doesn't work like that. You'll find out."

"Yeah." Mabel sighed. "I hate to think of going back to Piedmont this year. I gotta leave Waddles here this fall."

"Yeah? Well, don't worry. Waddles likes Soos an' Melody an' me. We'll take good care of him."

"Yeah, I know, but still I'll miss him."

"Hey," Wendy said, "here's a crazy idea: Why don't you guys come up here for a few days over Christmas break, an' you can visit Waddles?"

"Don't know if Mom and Dad would go for that," Mabel said. "The round-trip by bus takes about a whole day and a half, so we wouldn't have much time to visit."

Wendy considered that, and then suggested, "Look, if I can talk Dad into leavin' me out of Apocalypse trainin' this winter—and he oughta agree, since I got like a job now an' anyways I'm by far the best one in the family at the whole thing—I can, like, drive down to Piedmont and pick you guys up an' then take you home after. You won't have to ride the bus for sixteen hours each way. I'll bet in a car it won't take more'n five or six. Road trip!"

"That sounds so _cool!_ I'd love it!" Mabel said.

"It's a deal, then," Wendy chuckled. "Now all's I have to do is talk Dad into it. Betcha Soos will tell him he really needs me in the Shack if I ask him to do it. An' between Thanksgiving and Christmas is usually the last big tourist time before the Shack closes down for winter the first week of January, so it won't be a lie."

"Road _trip!_ Road _trip_!" Mabel chanted.

"Lookin' forward to it already—hey, look, I think that's the Northwest limo comin' in."

It was—from where they had parked, the girls could look down a long straightaway toward town, and the big car was unmistakable. Wendy had killed the Dart's engine. She was just reaching for the key to start it again, when Mabel shrieked, "The birds!"

Wendy froze, hand extended. The sky darkened as an enormous cloud of birds, thousands of them, roiled and swirled and funneled down from the sky with a thundering clatter of wings. The oncoming limo slowed as the bird-nado bore down on it—and then it vanished beneath the whirling, boiling, seething black and brown and white swirl of birds.

Mabel got a glimpse of headlights coming on, and she could see that the car was weaving, lurching off the far side of the highway, but then she couldn't see anything of the automobile at all, and when she asked "What's going on?" she knew that Wendy couldn't even hear her.

The rattle and whir of a million wings drowned out all other sound like the mad rush of storm winds. Wendy yelped in alarm as birds smacked against the driver's window of the Dart, even pounded on the roof—and they were just on the fringes of the furious flock.

And then—the birds abruptly scattered, not in an organized way, but just flew randomly in all directions, now seeming calm and without focus. Within seconds, they had cleared off, leaving behind only drifting feathers to show they'd been there at all.

"C'mon!" Wendy yelled. "Gotta see if they're all right!"

She ran across the highway, her red hair flying. Her trapper hat fell off, and Mabel stooped as she ran and scooped it up off the asphalt.

The Northwest limo was in the ditch on the highway shoulder. Every window in it had been spiderwebbed and bulls-eyed with cracks; dozens of dead birds lay around it on the highway and in the grass. As the girls came up to the car, the driver's door opened and the Northwest butler and chauffeur, Wellington, pulled himself out, breathing hard. "I say!"

"Hey, man, are you OK?" Wendy asked.

Wellington leaned against the hood. "Just—just shaken, Miss. See to Mrs. Northwest, in the back."

Wendy wrenched the door open. Mrs. Priscilla Northwest, her face frozen in shock—or perhaps by numerous plastic surgeries—stared out with wide, frightened eyes. "Are you hurt?" Wendy asked, extending her hand. "C'mon, the birds are gone."

"Pacifica," Mrs. Northwest said in a voice edged with hysteria. "Where is she? Where is she?"

"Isn't she in the car?" Mabel asked, but she could see that aside from Pacifica's mom, the backseat was empty.

"She—she leaped out when we went off the road," Mrs. Northwest said, looking around wildly. "Is she unhurt? Where is she?"

She was—nowhere.

Which was impossible, because the whole event had lasted only seconds, and the ground was flat on this side of the highway as far as the farmhouse, with no place to hide. And Mabel and Wendy were sure that Pacifica hadn't run across the highway, toward the side where they had parked.

But Pacifica wasn't hiding under the limo, or in the ditch, or anywhere on the trimmed lawn. And she hadn't had time to reach the house.

Yet she was missing.

And when Priscilla Northwest realized that, she promptly lost it.

* * *

 


	3. Shadow of a Trout

* * *

"And you actually saw Pacifica open the rear door of the car and leap out?" Stanford Pines asked Priscilla Northwest. She sat on a sofa in the Northwests' living room. Stan stood near her, and just behind him, Dipper was acting as note-taker.

She nodded wordlessly, and Ford murmured, "Note that as a 'yes,' Dipper."

Dutifully, Dipper scribbled the answer in his pocket notebook. "Tell us about the shopping trip," Stanford urged Pacifica's mom in a kind voice. "Don't leave anything out. The smallest detail might help us."

"Well," Priscilla said in a voice worn hoarse from sobbing, "we went to the mall and looked at shoes in all three shoe stores there. Pacifica really liked six pairs—one pair from Threlkeld's, one from Fancy Feet, and four from Uptown Girlz. We bought them all—Wellington put the packages in the boot of the car, and they must still be there. Then we had a light lunch at Rudy's on Main, and then Wellington drove us back home. We were within sight of the house when those horrible birds just came from out of nowhere and—and _attacked_ us!"

Ford glanced at Dipper, who nodded as his pencil skittered over the last few words. "Did Pacifica talk about anything on the way home?" Ford asked.

Shaking her head, Priscilla said, "I can't really remember much. She chattered about the sleepover that she had with Miss Pines and her friends. She wanted to know if she could host another sleepover here, and I told her not until next week. Then she said, 'What are those birds doing?' and pointed, and honestly, that was the first time I noticed them."

"This is important," Ford told her. "When she leaped out of the car, did you see which way she went?"

"No, no, I couldn't. Those birds were—it was like a storm, they darkened the light, and she just vanished in among them, and then they flew away and—and—Pacifica was—"

"Was gone," Ford said. "Well, we'll find her, I'm sure. Mrs. Northwest, I have to tell you that this has all the earmarks of something paranormal, like the ghost that haunted your mansion. However—"

They all looked around as the front door opened. A moment later Preston Northwest, followed closely by Sheriff Blubs and not so closely by Deputy Durland, who seemed to be walking with difficulty, came into the room. "Any word?" Northwest asked. "Has she called, or—anything?"

"No," Mrs. Northwest said. "Did you find any trace of her?"

"Not a smidgen," Blubs said, his eyes invisible behind his sunglasses. "Not a footprint, not a sign."

"There was a STOP sign," Durland put in helpfully. "I know, 'cause it's red and it has big white letters on it and it has eight sides."

"That's not the kind of sign my wife meant," Preston Northwest said in the tone of a man who had already spent too much time talking to Deputy Durland.

"Oh, what are we going to do?" Priscilla asked, wringing her hands.

Sheriff Blubs chuckled. "Well, now, I wouldn't worry. Teen-aged girls run away all the time. Usually they turn up. Maybe she went to stay with friends, or maybe she's working through some issues."

"Could've got a job as a circus geek," Durland suggested. When they stared at him, he said, "I did that one summer. It's easy."

"I'll put out an APB on Specifica—"

"PA-cifica," Preston corrected.

"OK, her, too," Blubs said genially. "If she's still inside of Roadkill County, somebody's gonna see her and pick her up. Oh, is she armed?"

"Is she—no, of course not!" Preston burst out. He put a palm over his face for a moment, and then said, "You—you do what you would normally do. I'm going to get in touch with some investigators I know who owe me a few favors. We have to find my daughter!"

"I'll need a list of all of your daughter's friends," Blubs said.

"I—you'll have to ask Priscilla that. I—I'm afraid I don't know their names," Preston told him.

"Oh, Preston! I don't think I do, either!" his wife wailed.

Dipper cleared his throat. "Excuse me, but my sister can help you out. I'm pretty sure she knows almost every girl her age in Gravity Falls, and she'll know who Pacifica's friends were."

"Then we'll question her," Blubs said.

Durland whispered, "Should I get the waterboard?"

Blubs put a hand on his arm. "Sorry, Durland. We'll have no time for boogie-boarding today."

"Aw."

Blubs hitched up his gun belt, and his 9-mm automatic fell out. He chuckled. "There that dang thing goes again!"

"I got it," Durland said, but Dipper beat him to it.

After putting the safety on, Dipper handed it back to the sheriff. "I think your holster's too small," he said.

"Yeah, but the other one makes me look short," Blubs explained.

"Also," Dipper said, "Mr. Durland's shoes are on the wrong feet."

"Again?" Durland said. "'Scuse me." He plopped down on the sofa next to Mrs. Northwest and began to unlace his shoes.

"Dipper," Ford said quietly, "go get Wendy and Mabel, please."

"Yes, sir."

They were in the Northwests' kitchen, where Wellington, the chauffeur, was chatting in low tones to the cook, a plump, middle-aged woman. Both Wendy and Mabel looked upset—and no wonder, Dipper thought. He led them back to the living room, but Ford had stepped out into the hallway.

"Have you found out what happened to her?" Wendy asked.

"Not yet. Do you girls know the name of Pacifica's friends? The police need to get in touch with them to see if they've heard from her."

Wendy looked at Mabel, who shrugged. "Tiffany and Delores are two of her old friends, and then there's Muffy and Brittany and Vanita. And us—I mean me, Grenda, and Candy. That's about it. I don't think she actually had too many real friends."

"Go inside and tell Sheriff Blubs what you know about them. Last names, phone numbers if you have them, any other details."

Mabel went into the living room, and Wendy asked, "Ford, dude, is that really gonna help?"

"Frankly, I doubt it," Ford said. "But at least it'll keep Blubs and Durland busy for a while."

Wellington came hurrying down the hall. "I beg your pardon," he said, opening the living room door again. "Sir, you called?"

"Yes, Wellington. I need you to drive over to the Portland airport to meet our nephew's plane this evening."

"Sir, the limousine is in no condition to drive. All the windows are shattered."

"Then take my BMW. His plane's due at 7:30. Flight 1988 from La Guardia."

"Very good, sir. I shall go immediately."

"Here are the keys."

"Thank you, sir."

"Wellington," Mrs. Northwest said in a strained voice, "Don't say anything to him about all this."

"Very good, madam."

He came back out, Mabel came back out, and Ford said, "Wendy, will you please drive Mabel home? Dipper and I need to stay for a while."

"Hey," Mabel objected, "Wendy and I have dibs on this case!"

"Sorry, Mabel," Wendy told her. "My dad needs me to be home tonight. After spending the night in the Shack, if I didn't get back to make dinner, he'd never let me go to a sleepover again. Or on a date, or to the store, or anywhere. But I'll drop you off."

"Great-uncle Ford," she pleaded. "Let me stay. I'll help, and you can take me back to the Shack when you take Dipper."

"Well—"

"Let her stay," Dipper said. "Or you won't ever hear the end of it."

"Oh, very well."

Since Blubs and Durland didn't have much interest in looking around any further, Dipper, Mabel, and Ford went out to check all the grounds of the farm.

Their first stop was the limousine, which Wellington had parked in the detached garage. "This damage is incredible," Ford said. The car wasn't locked, and they looked inside. The windshield seemed to be barely holding in place—it was shattered into a million bits, and it sagged inward. All the other windows were cracked and starred from impacts. Dipper slid into the front seat and looked back. "Hey," he said, "look at this."

Ford asked, "What am I looking at?"

Dipper tapped the partition between the front seat and the passenger compartment. It was made of some heavy plastic, and it was darkly tinted. There was a sliding panel that the driver could open if he needed to pass something back, or vice-versa, but it was closed and latched.

"Fairly standard for a top-end model," Ford said.

Dipper nodded. "Yes, but I don't think Wellington could actually see anybody in the back. So he couldn't have seen Pacifica jumping out of the car—he would've heard the door open and slam shut again, but he wouldn't be able to swear that Pacifica had jumped out."

Mabel frowned. "Wah-wah-what? You mean Mrs. Northwest could be lying? Like maybe Pacifica wasn't even in the car, and her mom took advantage of the bird attack to open and slam the door so Wellington would back her up when she said Pacifica had jumped?"

"Um—sure," Dipper said. He hadn't really got that far, but it sounded vaguely plausible.

"I can't believe that," Ford said. "She's far too upset. No, she saw Pacifica leap out of the car. Or perhaps she _thought_ she did. Well, I can't see that the car can tell us anything. Let's take a look at the outbuildings and the pasture."

Pacifica wasn't in the barn or the stables, and the man who worked there said he hadn't seen her all day. Behind the stables lay a broad pasture, really too big for just one pony—but in the past, when her family was really rich, Pacifica had owned about half a dozen of them.

A white wooden five-barred fence surrounded the grassy expanse. The pasture was well-kept, and Mabel would happily have rolled down a hill in the lush grass, except that Dipper pointed out a few places where Desperado, Pacifica's only pony currently, had made deposits.

"Ew," she said. "Doesn't Pacifica pick up after her pets?"

"Do you do that for Waddles?" asked Ford.

Dipper groaned. "You had to ask."

For the next ten minutes, Mabel launched into a lecture on composting and the use of pig droppings as a potent fertilizer. "I keep it in a big composting bin!" she finished up.

Dipper said, "Yeah, a quarter of a mile into the woods, because the tourists started to complain about the smell."

"Hey, it _could_ be coincidence, bro. You _did_ start taking a daily shower just recently."

At the bottom of the long slope, in a graveled bed, ran a shallow stream. "It's not deep enough for anyone to drown in," Dipper said. "Oh, wait, I forgot Serge. We'd better check, just in case."

The stream, either a largish creek or a smallish river, was perhaps eighteen inches deep in the center of the stream, but in places narrow enough to jump across, which Mabel did several times. "Fish!" she said excitedly.

Ford adjusted his glasses and gazed into the clear water. "Those are cutthroat trout. They probably spawn in the lake. These are young ones—most of them look only ten or twelve inches long."

"Here's an invisible one," Mabel said.

"I won't believe it until I don't see it with my own eyes," Dipper told her sarcastically.

"Well, come and look!" Mabel stood defiantly pointing downward.

"Extraordinary!" Ford said, kneeling beside the stream.

Dipper stood beside him. "I don't see anything."

"Look on the bottom of the stream, right . . . there," Ford said, pointing.

"What? The shadow?"

"Exactly. It's the shadow of a trout—but there's no trout there, see?"

Dipper felt the hair on his neck prickling. Sure enough, in the low light of the setting sun, a torpedo-shaped shadow faced upstream, tail moving to hold the position against the current. Ford stroked his chin, then picked up a pebble. "If there were a fish—watch the shadow, now—it should be . . . about . . . there!" He plunked the stone into the water, and the shadow spun and sped away downstream.

"Wow!" Mabel said. "So is it like a ghost fish? Or just invisible?"

"How can an invisible fish cast a shadow?" Dipper asked.

"Mm-uh. How could a ghost do it?"

"Another Gravity Falls anomaly," Ford pronounced, rising to his feet. "However, this isn't helping our search."

"Wait, wait! I've got it!" Mabel yelled. "Grunkle Ford, Dipper, don't you see? Pacifica didn't disappear at all! She vanished!"

"Um," Dipper said, "I don't see the difference."

Mabel waved her arms. "I mean, she turned invisible! Like the trout! Something made her invisible!" She put her hands on her hips. "Pacifica, you trickster, you! Are you right here with us? Dipper, has anything invisible kissed you? Pinched your butt? Groped you?"

"Mabel, please!" Ford said, blushing.

"I got this," Dipper said. "Nope, no, and uh-uh."

Closing one eye and pointing an accusing finger, Mabel asked, "Would you tell us if it happened, you little scoundrel, you?"

"Again with the little?" Dipper grumbled. "One lousy millimeter! Anyway, no, it didn't happen, and yes, I would have told. Be serious, Mabel. We're looking for Pacifica, remember?"

Mabel drooped a little at that. "Yeah . . . I'm sorry."

"Come on, kids," Ford said impatiently. "The sun will be down in a few minutes, and we still have a lot of ground to cover."

* * *

 **From Mabel's Investigation Log** : _It's nine p.m. and we're back in the Shack after stopping for burgers and fries. Before we left the Northwest farm, Grunkle Ford, Dipper, and I walked all over the place, and it's big—it's forty acres, Mr. Northwest told Grunkle Ford. I totally don't know what that means, but after all that walking, my feet are two achers! See what I did there? Bom-tissshhhhh! That's a written-out rimshot._

_I'm sort of bummed because the guys don't believe my invisibility hypotenuse. Wait a minute, is that the right word? It looks wrong. It's not hippopotamus or hypothalamus or hypnosis, I know that. Wait, I'll go ask Dipper._

_I'm back. It's "hypothesis." They don't believe my invisibility hypothesis, but think about it: If the birds turned Pacifica invisible the minute she jumped out of the car, that would explain why we didn't see her! And if they, maybe, picked her up and flew her somewhere, that would account for her not being on the farm!_

_I know, birds can't normally pick up a human kind of person, but there were a LOT of birds, and maybe if you're invisible you lose weight._

_But Dipper insists that invisibility won't work, because if you're invisible, then the retinas of your eyes are invisible, too, and so no light can focus on them, and so you're blind. I argued with him until he said, "Maybe something could give other people the illusion of your being invisible. But who would want to make a fish invisible?"_

_He's got me there. Maybe I can dream up an answer tonight._

_But—being all serious here—I'm worried. Pacifica and I aren't besties, but we are friends. Kind of. She can be a pain in the butt, but she kinda has good instincts now and then, and she did rescue Grenda, Candy, and me from being wood. Well, to be fair, she didn't do it for us so much as for Dipper, I think. He was wood, too._

_And I guess everybody at the party at the Northwests' last year was also wood, except for the Northwests and Wellington. Pacifica's parents were hiding in a safe room with the butler, whom they planned to eat if their emergency rations gave out. Pacifica had her hand on the lever that would open the gates to the ordinary people of Gravity Falls, which would banish the ghost. Which she did, so all us woodies turned back human again._

_Anyway, Pacifica pacified the ghost (nearly had another good one there) and saved us all. So her heart's in the right place. I hope we can find her. This is so weird, her disappearing like that._

_Maybe we'll have better luck tomorrow._

_Private Eyelet Mabel Pines signing off for the night!_

* * *

 


	4. The Little Lady Vanishes

 

* * *

  
**From Journal 4, by Stanford Pines:** _(Continuing from the notes I set down an hour ago)_

_It is past midnight, but I'm far too keyed up to sleep. The baffling disappearance of Pacifica Elise Northwest—I don't think I recorded her full name or background; she's the thirteen-year-old daughter of a wealthy couple in Gravity Falls—intrigues me._

_The elements seem so inchoate, so disparate: an uncanny flock of birds that attack an automobile (nothing like that has ever happened in Roadkill County, or indeed in all of Oregon, though I found online an account of somewhat similar avian behavior that took place in Bodega Bay, California, in 1963); the discovery of a heretofore unknown species of apparently invisible fish; and most of all, the inexplicable (to me, at least) way in which the Northwest girl apparently vanished into thin air._

_NOTE TO SELF: I have reached a tentative hypothesis as to how an invisible fish may cast a shadow: the transparent body of the fish displaces water; the sunlight coming through the water passes through the void where the fish's body is; and unequal diffraction of the sun's rays through water and empty space results in a fish-shaped shadow (albeit a faint one) forming on the stream bed._

_Earlier tonight I recorded on the previous pages most of my direct observations of the Northwest automobile, home, and grounds, and in a moment I'll refer to my nephew's detailed notes of the remarks of the Northwest family and their servants to set down their apposite comments. I am sure they will be accurate._

_I should mention that my great-nephew Dipper is an impressively bright young man—and I'm happy to add that this year he seems to have some awareness of the importance of hygiene! It is no longer a strain on the olfactory nerves to sit with him inside a closed room or in an automobile._

_He makes me wish that I knew more about his grandfather, Stanley's and my older brother, Sherman, who, like Stanley, left home in his teens. I can barely remember him. After all, he was twelve years older than we were. I wonder if he was like Dipper, because I see much of myself in my great-nephew, along with just a bit of Stanley. But I'm sleepy and I'm wandering from my subject._

_To get back to Dipper: Earlier, at the Northwests' house, he astutely pointed out something that I followed up on, and it frankly makes me wonder if we even understand just what happened. Dipper—not his real name, of course, but he prefers this nickname to his real one—Dipper observed that the partition between the driver's position in the limousine and the passenger compartment was all but opaque, a plastic so deeply tinted that a driver can perceive little or nothing by merely looking into the rear-view mirror._

_Dipper and I therefore returned to Mr. Wellington, their butler/chauffeur, and questioned him very particularly: Was he absolutely certain that both mother and daughter had actually sat in the back seat? I shall quote his answers from Dipper's notes:_

_A: Well, sir, I carried the packages out to the car and stowed them in the boot. While I was busy with that, I lost sight of Mrs. Northwest and her daughter, but I heard the automobile door open and close, and I went up front and sat behind the wheel, opened the small hatch, and asked, 'Where to, Ma'am?' Mrs. Northwest told me to drive home, and I closed the hatch and did just as she requested. However, thinking back on it now, I have to say that I never actually saw Miss Pacifica in the passenger compartment._

_Did he hear her?_

_A: I'm sorry, sir, but honestly I cannot say for certain. I did hear talking, though it wasn't loud enough for me to make out what was said. I assume that Mrs. Northwest was conversing with Miss Pacifica, but I would not absolutely swear to that. I am not at all certain that I heard two voices, and it might have been, for instance, Mrs. Northwest conversing with someone on her mobile phone._

_And of course, before he actually reached the Northwest home and parked, the birds attacked, and that's when Pacifica apparently vanished—so he never actually saw her in the back seat, he never saw her leave the car, and he is not sure he even heard her voice during the drive._

_This is provoking. Mrs. Northwest insists that she is certain that Pacifica was in the car with her, but we can find no corroboration._

_Now, conjuring tricks depend on misdirection. Can something like that be at play here? Would Mrs. Northwest for some reason engineer a fake disappearance? What could her motive possibly be? And I believe myself to be a good enough judge of people to say without uncertainty that she was deeply distressed, heartbroken, one might say, over her daughter's vanishing._

_But—could she be mistaken? Could she have somehow been fooled? I can think of some possible ways:_

_The Shapeshifter might have taken the girl's place while in the store and then changed into a bird upon leaping out of the car. I know from experience that the creature can imitate any form, including humans, down to the smallest detail of their apparel and physical features. However—my monitors tell me the Shapeshifter is still cryogenically frozen. NOTE TO SELF: Visit bunker within the next week and ascertain whether the cryogenics tube requires maintenance._

_The size-changing crystals that Dipper and Mabel used last summer might possibly come into play. Conceivably, Pacifica might have used one to shrink herself upon her jumping from the car, and a bird could then have flown off with her. But what would be the point? If she wanted to run away from home, there are less flamboyant ways. NOTE TO SELF: Suggest to Mabel that she might shrink her pet pig, Waddles, to the size of a bunny so she can take him home to Piedmont._

_Perhaps the disappearance was managed by some kind of illusion spell. I keep wondering if Pacifica was actually not even in the car at all. Perhaps, as in scenario 1, a magical doppelganger could have deceived her mother. Bill Cipher could certainly pull off that kind of spell, but he is currently almost without power and cannot interfere in the real world. NOTE TO SELF: I hesitate to do this, because Cipher is NOT TO BE TRUSTED, but Dipper has spoken to the much-diminished version him that exists in the Mindscape. Maybe he could learn if Cipher knows of some illusion that might be responsible? LAST RESORT._

_There is hypnosis, of course. Could Mrs. Northwest have been hypnotized to imagine that Pacifica was in the car? It could not be retroactive. She could not have been hypnotized after the appearance of the bird swarm—Wendy Corduroy and Mabel witnessed the bird attack, and there was no time for anyone to hypnotize the lady after that began, and no one was in the car to do it on the trip out. Unless—could Wellington be involved more deeply than I think?_

_Why did the birds even attack? Their movements had purpose and direction. Who—or what—provided that direction?_

_Or is there something obvious that I'm missing?_

_One thing is clear: the local authorities aren't doing much to clear up the mystery. Mr. Northwest offered a generous reward if I can find and return the girl, which I declined—but I assured him that all of us in the Pines family will do everything we can to learn what has happened to her._

_I don't know. I hope for the best, but I can't help fearing the worst._

_I just don't know._

* * *

**From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** T _his is driving me so crazy! We must be missing SOMETHING. But what?_

_I mean, great-uncle Ford and Mabel and I even opened the trunk of the car and looked through the shopping bags. We even opened the shoe boxes! And we found the shoes that Pacifica and her mom had bought. We verified the time of the purchases from the credit-card receipts. I even checked to make sure the shoes were Pacifica's size. Heck, I even noted down the styles and colors! Mabel helped with that, though._

_On our way back to the Shack, Ford called two of the stores and talked to the clerks who waited on Pacifica. They remembered her being there—they knew her really well, because she buys a lot of shoes. They said her behavior was normal and she didn't seem upset or edgy._

_It's a little puzzling that over an hour went by between their last shoe purchase and when the limousine reached the Northwest house. It's only a twenty-minute drive, if it's even that much. Unfortunately, Wellington didn't remember just when they left the mall. He didn't think the drive back was unusually long._

_So—check tomorrow to see what happened in those missing forty-five minutes or so? Maybe Mrs. Northwest has some explanation. They might have stopped for a snack and sodas somewhere in the Mall. I don't know. No sense in trying to figure it out without more evidence._

_I'm wondering about Pacifica's cousin from New York visiting just at the time she vanished. It feels like a fishy coincidence. But there's really no connection. She never even met him. They're like second cousins or something—he and Pacifica shared a great-great grandfather, I think it was—I'm not really sure—but the old man, Nathaniel, came west and was here in the early days of Gravity Falls._

_His oldest son, though, remained in upper New York State. And HIS son was the grandfather (I think—I lost track while Mr. Northwest was explaining) of the cousin. I'm not real sure what relationship that the cousin has to Pacifica._

_Anyhow, the two branches of the Northwest family were not so friendly. Preston said that the cousin's dad and mom died early, and the cousin—why didn't I ask his name? The cousin was raised by his grandfather and grandmother. They're, like, philanthropists. I think I spelled that right. They give to a lot of charities._

_So I guess they're not very much like OUR Northwests. They didn't stay in contact, really. Christmas-card exchanges, that sort of thing._

_Getting late. I'd better try to get some sleep, or I'll be eating my shirt tomorrow._

_I almost hate to admit it, but I'm really worried about Pacifica. Grunkle Stan says if anybody can take care of herself, she can, but still—it's so mysterious. I can't help thinking something awful might have happened to her._

_I mean, it's not like I'm in love with her—I'm not! But ever since our adventure with the ghost last year, I kind of like her as a friend._

_Have to turn in. Maybe tomorrow I'll come up with some idea of how to continue the investigation._

* * *

**From the Investigation Log of Mabel Pines:** _Agggh! It's after midnight, and I STILL can't get to sleep. I keep thinking about everything over and over. My brain must be too full. I wonder if this is what Dipper feels like all the time._

_I can't decide whether I liked the blue pumps or the light-green flats better. Either of them would look good on Pacifica, and they're real expensive shoes!_

_Grunkle Ford thinks maybe this is some kind of trick that Pacifica's pulling, but come on! Nobody who'd just bought all those beautiful shoes would run away without taking them!_

_Tomorrow I'm going to the Mall and I'll question all the clerks in the stores that Pacifica and her mom hit. Oh, oh!_

_Security tapes!_

_They MUST have caught Pacifica and her mom on video! Every store has them, and the Mall even has them in the parking lot! If I can't manage to get a look at them, I'm sure that Grunkle Ford can!_

_Huh. So what if we can see Pacifica trying on shoes? Not sure what good that would do, but it's something, anyway._

_One thing though, it might tell us exactly when Welly drove the limo away from the Mall. There's a what do you call it, discrepantsy in time. That word does not look right. Descrepancy. Still looks weird. I know what I mean—there's some time that seems to be missing, and maybe one of the security videos would clear that up._

_Waddles is restless tonight. I let him in after Soos and Melody went to bed, but he's grunting and keeps moving around. He sleeps on the floor now 'cause if he gets in the bed, there's hardly any room for me._

_I think he can tell that I'm a little upset. We have a strange and beautiful human-pig telepathy._

_Hah. I remember when we brought Waddles home to Piedmont last year. I told Mom he had to sleep indoors, and she said, "What about the smell?" and I told her, "It's OK. He got used to Dipper in Gravity Falls!" Hey-o!_

_Rats. I made myself smile, and that made me feel guilty. We have to find out what happened to Pacifica. We just HAVE to._

* * *

"Wendy! You goin' to bed tonight, girl?"

Wendy stood on the porch of the Corduroy log cabin, staring into the night and hugging herself. "Yeah, Dad, in a minute."

She heard the front door open behind her, and Dan Corduroy loomed over her. "What's the matter, baby girl?"

"I told you. Pacifica Northwest. Something really freaky happened to her, and I can't figure what. All those birds, man . . . ." She trailed off and shivered a little.

Her father put his enormous hand on her shoulder. "Buck up, Wendy. The Pines guys are gonna help the sheriff find her. I heard about it in town. They're good men. And that other Pines guy, not the one we thought was Stanford all the time, but the other one, you know—"

"Stanford. The real one. The one that we thought was Stanford turned out to be Stanley."

"Yeah." Dan was silent for a few moments. "You know, I built the first part of that Mystery Shack for the real Stanford. Later on, I thought he started actin' real goofy, but I guess that was when Stanley took his place. To look at them you can't hardly see any difference. Anyhow, I was sayin', that Stanford is a real smart guy. Anybody can figure it out, he can. Don't fret, baby girl."

"Can't help it." Wendy shrugged. "You know, I used to not like Pacifica. I don't mean I, like, hated her or anything, but you know—she was just this stuck-up rich kid. But since last summer, I kinda got to know her. She was at the sleepover in the Shack that I went to. She's got a sort of sweet side that she keeps way down inside herself. Hides it away from people. But, dang, I'd hate it if we never found her. OK with you, Dad, if I help the Pines guys look for her?"

"You know it is," Dan said. He laughed. "Wouldn't make no difference if I told you that you couldn't, would it?"

"Nope." Wendy hugged her father. It was like hugging a small house. "I love you, Dad."

"I double love you, Wendy. Get some rest, girl. You won't be no good to nobody if you're all wore out."

"OK. 'Night."

"Good night, baby girl." Wendy went inside, but for a few minutes Manly Dan stood on the porch and looked up at the stars. Quietly, he murmured, "Lord, look after that little girl, you hear me now?"

Then he, too, went inside. Before long the whole house vibrated to his snoring.

* * *

And in the Northwest farmhouse, an extraordinarily handsome young man—he might have been seventeen or eighteen—stood at the window in the guest bedroom, staring out into the night.

He, too, murmured, but not a prayer.

In fact, what he said was "Where the hell did you go, cousin?"

* * *

 


	5. Dial M for Mystery Shack

* * *

  
**Chapter 5: Dial M for Mystery Shack**

The next morning was a day off for Dipper and Wendy—in that they skipped their calisthenics and run. They had cut back to five days per week, which Wendy said was a more sensible training regime.

However, that didn't mean they weren't busy. Soos, Melody, and Abuelita drove off to Portland early in the morning, and Wendy, Mabel, and Dipper had breakfast together. Mabel had offered to do something called Power Popovers, but since making them involved eggs, flour, caramels, sprinkles, and potatoes, Wendy said, "How 'bout I just make us some scrambled eggs, dudes? And I can do hash browns and sourdough toast. That sound good?"

It not only sounded good, it was delicious. "Oh wowie!" Mabel said after her first big bite. "Wendy, you are a fantastic cook!" She picked up a slice of toast and began to slather half a jar of Abuelita's homemade plum jelly on it.

"This is really good," Dipper agreed, his mouth as full as a chipmunk's that feared a hard winter.

"No big deal," Wendy said with a smile and a shrug. "You grate the potatoes, mix in some chopped peppers and onions, and fry them at the same time you're cookin' the eggs. For the scramble, just put a little milk in with the eggs, little salt 'n pepper, scramble 'em good in real butter, and as they start to cook drop in some shredded jack cheese an' just keep stirrin'. And toast anybody can do." She set two glasses of orange juice down for the twins and poured herself her ritual cup of coffee.

After breakfast, Dipper volunteered to wash up—Mabel gasped, "It must be tru-u-ue love!" in a whispery, breathy voice—and the three got the Shack set up for business. Dipper went to his room and changed into his miniature Mr. Mystery costume—though Soos had bought him a larger size black suit—and when he came downstairs, Wendy said, "Dude! Look at you! That eyepatch makes you look dashin', man."

"Yeah." Dipper coughed. "Mabel, I borrowed some of your make-up to sort of hide my birthmark. You mind?"

Mabel laughed. "Phhhbt! You're welcome to it, Dip. But actually I always tell you that I think the birthmark makes you look cool."

"Guys," Wendy said suddenly as she stocked the cash register, "I wonder if that weird phone call about Pacifica had anything to do with—you know."

 _"That_ came out of the blue!" Mabel said.

Wendy closed the register drawer with a ding! "I know, but I can't help thinkin' about it."

Dipper said, "Great-uncle Ford looked into it. The caller ID showed that it was just one of those cheap cell phones. They call them 'burners' on the cop shows on TV. Not traceable."

"Yeah, well, that don't exactly make me feel better," Wendy muttered.

Though they had everything set up well before opening time, none of them felt much like working. However, as the clock ticked down, Mabel urged, "Look, everybody, I know we're all worried and all, but as Grunkle Stan would say—the show must go on! So hide your sad faces and be, like, _ta-dah!_ for our customers. That's what Grunkle Stan would do!"

"Ya got that right, sweetie!" rumbled a familiar voice. Stanley Pines came in and stared at Dipper. "Hey, I like the new look! Tell ya what, kid, I'll teach ya how to roll loaded dice an' deal off the bottom of the deck, and you'll clean up in high school next year. Whattaya say?"

Mabel had run to Stan for her hug. Dipper grinned. "Ummm—thanks, Grunkle Stan, but all my adult teeth have grown in. I thi-n-n-nk I'd kinda like to keep 'em."

Stan chuckled, leaning on his eight-ball cane. "Okay, okay. So never mind me, you three. I'm just here to kibitz an' relieve anybody who needs a break."

Wendy punched him in the arm. "You old faker! You love it here!"

Stan shrugged and grinned. "What can I say? I gave this place thirty years of my life. Mabel, pumpkin, I heard what you were sayin' about the show must go on. You make me real proud, kid. And the show's the reason I'm here." He clapped his hands together and rubbed them and _still_ managed to catch his cane before it hit the floor. "So what're you each doin'?"

Wendy explained their roles—she'd run the tours, Dipper would guide people through the Museum, Mabel would man the register. "Sounds like a plan to me," Stan said. "Oh, yeah, I nearly forgot, let me bring in your newest attraction." He went to the front door, opened it, and whistled. "C'mon in, kiddo. You been wantin' to get back in show business—this is your chance!"

A few minutes later, Dipper said, "Man, Gideon, you make a really good Wolf Boy."

"This here costume is right itchy," Gideon complained, squirming a little.

"Yeah, whattaya gonna do?" Stan asked with a wink at Dipper. "Okay, Gideon, here's the deal: You dance when they throw money at you. An' you get to keep all the dough they toss!"

"Workin' for tips? I used to make more at the Tent o' Telepathy," Gideon said. Then, with a sigh, he added, "But since I went straight, my allowance is a little bit on the skimpy side. My income doesn't match my outcome if you catch my drift."

They practiced the dance. Gideon slugged down some water and complained, "Whooh! I'm plumb outa practice."

"No, you did good," Mabel assured him, pasting a sticker on his bare chest: DANCING KING.

"Awww," Gideon said, smiling all over his pudgy face. "You still like me!"

"'Course I do!" Mabel said. She backed off a step. "Uh—as a friend!"

After that morning, Dipper always suspected that Grunkle Stan had showed up, and had conned Gideon into the wolf-boy routine, just to keep him, Mabel, and Wendy amused and to keep their minds off Pacifica.

If that was his scheme—it worked.

They kept busy as soon as they opened, with five different busloads of tourists and a good many random cars pulling in. The crowds were in a mood to have fun, and they all obliged. Dipper hyped the fake relics and displays with so much enthusiasm and flat-out lies that Grunkle Stan wiped a tear from his eye and murmured, "That's my boy!"

Wendy was in hyper-mode, just the way she had been back the previous summer when the Shack re-opened and she wholeheartedly promoted the ill-fated Grand Re-Opening Dance and Karaoke Party—the one that literally allowed Dipper to say, "I saw dead people!"

Mabel cheerfully rang up purchases and almost always suggest a little extra something that, nine out of ten times, the customer bought. Grunkle Stan didn't even mind that she tossed in Mystery Shack bumper stickers for free. The register rang like the Christmas carol about the bells.

And as the Wolf Boy, Gideon outdid himself, not only dancing but making up a song about howling at the moon that not only kept the marks (as Grunkle Stan called them) snapping photos, clapping along, and laughing, but reaching into their pockets. He garnered not just spare change and singles, but fives, tens, and even a few twenties, and each performance found him sprightlier and more charming than ever—and at the end of each, richer.

Just before noon the phone rang. Mabel answered: "Hello, you've reached the Mystery Shack! Come on in if you are able and meet the cutie known as Mabel!"

"Hi, Hambone," came Soos's voice. "How's everything goin', dude?"

"Soos!" Mabel covered up the mouthpiece of the phone. "Guys! It's Soos! Has Melody had her checkup? How is she? What did the doctor say?"

Soos laughed. "Everything's fine, little dude! Baby's healthy, Melody's healthy, and we're all, like, hungry enough to eat a horse, so we're stoppin' for lunch at Aunt Tina's—wait, what? Melody says that should be Andina's, her favorite Latino place from when she lived here, and then we're comin' back. Should be there between one-thirty and two o'clock, about."

"Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?" Mabel whispered.

Soos chuckled. "Umm. . . we're not gonna tell yet. See you in an hour and a half, dudes!"

Mabel hung up the phone, raised both of her fists in the air, shook them, and _squee'd_ so loud that tourists came in from the Museum and the parking lot to find out what had happened. She leaped off the stool, ran to the dance platform, and hugged Gideon, then Dipper, who had come in with the tourists from the Museum. "It's a _baby!"_ she announced.

Her cheerfulness was so contagious that sales picked up by fifty per cent. When the mid-day lull came, they'd hit a new record. "Well," Gideon said as the last tourists drove away, "I figure I cleared about two hundred, two-fifty. Not bad for less'n three hours! Tell Mr. Ramirez that any old time he wants a Wolf Boy performance, if he'll come an' pick me up, I'll give him a good 'un!"

Stan drove him back home. The phone rang again—Great-Uncle Ford, wondering if Dipper and Mabel would be able to assist him later. "Sure," Mabel said. "We'll be over as soon as we can leave."

As soon as she hung up, it rang one more time. Grunkle Stan was calling this time: "Hey, don't you guys scarf any sandwiches or anything. I'm comin' back with some lunch." He returned about half-past noon with a fantastic lunch—two enormous pizzas from Patrick Michael O'Malley's Fine Italian Restaurant (long story there, never mind for the moment), one a Veggie O'Supremo, the other a Fully Loaded O'Pie, and the crew chowed down.

Wendy packed away four slices, mumbling, "Hey, Stan, thanks for rememberin' I like the vegetarian kind."

"It ain't vegan," Stan pointed out. "There's all that cheese!"

"'S OK, dude. I'm not vegetarian, really," Wendy said. "But I do love me some veggie pizza!"

The four of them couldn't finish off the huge pies, and Mabel put all the leftover pieces in a box and stored them in the fridge. "With a little syrup, there's breakfast tomorrow!" she crowed.

The phone rang again. Soos, advising them they had just come into Gravity Falls and asking if they needed anything. "Just to see you an' Melody, man," Wendy told him.

Then Soos, Melody, and Abuelita rolled in just before two, with the Shack already starting to get busy again, and Melody stood up under Mabel's relentless cross-examination well, not spilling the beans _(boop!)_ about her baby's gender. Stan kissed her on the forehead. "You're gonna be a great mama," he told her.

Melody looked at Soos. "Soos, you were going to ask Mr. Pines something."

Soos turned red. "Uh, yeah. Mr. Pines, dude, sir, I was hopin'—me and Melody would like—I mean, we'd be so proud if—you don't have to, but—" He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and blurted, "Would-you-be-our-baby's-godfather?"

Stan blinked, fished out his handkerchief, and honked his orange nose. "Soos, that's the nicest thing anybody's ever said to me. Of course I'll be the kid's godfather, ya—ya big knucklehead!"

Soos hugged him until Stan said, "OK, that's the five-second limit, so break it up."

Mabel and Dipper hitched a ride back into town with Grunkle Stan. Mabel told Ford she thought they should look at the security recordings from the Mall, he made a couple of calls, and by four that afternoon they had watched them all.

Sure enough, they saw Pacifica and her mom in all of the shoe stores, and in a couple of shots from out in the Mall—but they were nowhere in sight for about forty minutes. Then the parking-lot camera had caught Wellington pulling the limo to the curb, parking, getting out, and putting the packages in the back—but, unfortunately, the camera angle was low and they couldn't see either Pacifica or Mrs. Northwest. Wellington got into the driver's seat, the limo rolled away, and they were none the wiser.

Dipper had gone to the sheriff's office—he was welcome there, having helped Blubs and Durland fend off giant bats, a suspected werewolf (it turned out to be a bear with mange), and a few other weird things. Now he was being brought up to speed on the investigation. As Mabel observed, "That shouldn't take more than five minutes."

Mabel walked through town after the Mall—she wanted to think, and she wanted to walk off some of the pizza-born lethargy—and that was why, when she happened to glance over at the water tower for no particular reason, she froze. She wasn't close to it, and she couldn't be sure, but on the circular walkway at the base of the tower stood a figure.

And it had blonde hair.

And it was the right height—

 _"Pacifica?_ " Mabel whispered before breaking into a run.

* * *

 


	6. Vertigo!

* * *

As she ran at full tilt, Mabel had to re-dial 911 twice before getting it right. The operator asked what her emergency was. "There's a girl stuck on the water tower!" Mabel yelled.

"Which water—"

_"Gravity Falls! Gravity Falls!"_

"Grav—I'll dispatch someone. Who is this, please?"

"Mabel Pines, Mystery Shack! Hurry, please!" Mabel had reached the open ground around the tower. She shut off her phone and yelled, _"Pacifica!"_

From up on the tower came a faint yell: "Mabel? Why are you here? Just go away!"

"Pacifica, we've been worried sick! Help's coming!"

Sounding like her old petulant self, Pacifica shouted, "Go _away,_ Mabel! You'll ruin _everything!"_

"Hang on!" Mabel reached the ladder—on the far side from Pacifica—and began to climb. "I'm coming up!" Halfway up, the world started to spin, and Mabel had to close her eyes as her stomach churned. _Ack! I forgot I developed a fear of heights on this thing! Have to climb up to Pacifica. Have to—force myself—_

Windy up here. Cooler than on the ground, despite the afternoon sun. Three more rungs up, slowly, so slowly, but she had to force herself to step, turn loose of her hold, get a grip higher up, half-step, half drag herself up—and beneath her foot, one of the rungs gave way with a sickening crack! Mabel screamed as she felt herself starting to fall—

Then she tightened her grasp and for a dizzy second she seemed to swing over a vast chasm. She couldn't open her eyes, she _couldn't_ do it.

"Help!" It came out as a kitten-sized whimper.

Mabel found herself hanging by both hands, swinging as the wind gusted and eased—and with each passing second she was getting dizzier and dizzier—

Sirens! The wails were sharp and clear, distant but approaching—

And then—a scream!

A shouted word tore Mabel's throat raw: _"Pacifica!"_

Through the legs and struts of the tower, Mabel saw a flash of the falling girl, dressed in the same clothes she had worn in the surveillance videos taken at the Mall, a deep lavender skirt, boots, a paler lavender blouse—blonde hair flying—a sickening, final-sounding crunch!

"Pacifica!" Mabel wailed, and she had to close her eyes again. She couldn't stand to open them. The whole world spun out of control.

The sirens died with a few last whoops, and she heard voices down on the ground: "Stabilize the neck! Gurney, gurney! Get her into the ambulance! Quick!"

"One, two, three, lift!"

She heard a car door slamming, then one of the voices shouted up: "Girl! You on the ladder! Come down!"

"Can't," Mabel called out, her voice hoarse. "Ladder broke!"

"Ladder—I see it! Hang on! We'll send somebody. I can't stay. We have to get this girl to the hospital! Just hang on, help is coming!"

The sirens blared again and dwindled. Mabel desperately tried to pull herself up, but she lacked the strength in her arms. Her hands were sweating. Her teeth began to chatter, but not with cold. _I'm gonna fall too, I'm gonna fall too—_

A car screeched to a halt down below. A voice—Sheriff Blubs—"Miss Pines! Hold on! We're comin' up for you!"

"Can't—slipping!"

Then a rougher, urgent voice: "Hang on, Pumpkin! I'm nearly there!"

"Grunkle Stan!" Now she felt the ladder vibrating as her great-uncle all but bounded upwards, his greater weight threatening to shake her grip loose.

But she managed not to fall, and then when he spoke again, he was quite close: "OK, Mabel, now listen to me: I'm gonna reach up and grab your right foot. I'm gonna steady you. When I've got you, you have to help me. You grab hold of the uprights of the ladder, not the rungs. I'll hold you up and set your foot on the next rung down. You understand me, sweetie?"

"Y-Y-Yes."

"Attagirl! Easy does it now." She felt a firm grip on her right foot. "OK, sweetie, I got you. I'm gonna take some of the weight off. Now move your left hand to the upright. Get a good grip. Now the right hand. OK, that's good. You ready?"

"Hu—uh-huh." Strangely, now that help was at hand, Mabel started to shiver violently.

"Don't be scared. I'm with you. I got you. Here we go, nice and easy." Upward pressure on her foot, easing the ache in her arms. With a convulsive gasp, Mabel moved her grip lower. "Good. Now let yourself down slow. I got you." She felt his big hand supporting her butt, and the weight eased even more. "You're nearly there. Just three more inches. OK, here's the rung. Stretch down, there ya go. Now get your left foot down, same rung."

It was like a nightmare in slow motion, but Mabel managed it.

"You did great. Come on down, Pumpkin. You're doin' fine. I'm gonna be right behind you. You'll feel my chest against the backs of your legs. If you fall, I'm right here to catch you."

"My—my butt will—be—right in your—"

Stan actually laughed, though it sounded more like a dog's frightened yip. "Won't be the first time I've been called a buttface. Come on. That's right One rung at a time. Got a dozen to go. Eleven. Ten. Good girl!"

"You need any help?" Deputy Durland's voice.

Stanley already stood on the ground, and his voice dripped with sarcasm: "Thanks so much, but it's OK. I got her."

Then before she reached the ground, Mabel felt her Grunkle's arms close around her waist and lift her free. He set her down and she spun to hug him, shaking and crying like a three-year-old. "Grunkle Stan, I was so _scared!"_

He patted her back. "Cry it out, you'll feel better. I know you were scared, sweetie, I know. But you done good. Ford once told me that courage ain't not feelin' fear, but feelin' it and still doin' what you have to anyway."

Shuddering and sobbing, Mabel gasped, "Grunkle Stan, Pacifica fell off the tower!"

"Yeah," Blubs said, sounding shaken. "Some Mossy Run EMT's happened to be close by and the 911 operator got them on the horn. They're takin' her to the Mossy Run Trauma Center."

"Is she—how is she?" Grunkle Stan asked.

"Too early to tell," Blubs said, standing with his thumbs hooked into his gun belt. He turned as a green truck sped into the clearing around the base of the tower and parked in a spray of dust. Six men spilled out, wearing forest-ranger fire outfits—yellow fire-retardant coveralls, helmets, and over them, hoods. "Forestry Emergency Service," the driver said, flashing a badge so fast that Mabel couldn't read it. "Who's in charge?"

"I am," Blubs said, tilting his hat back. "I'm Sheriff of Gravity Falls."

"I'm his deputy," Durland said. He added, "I got a bell."

"Glad to know you," the man said without shaking hands with either of the lawmen. "I'm Team Leader Smith. As you know, Sheriff, the water tower is on Forest Service land. It's our jurisdiction. We'll have to go up and check the site of the accident."

"There's a rung missin' outa the ladder about halfway up," Stan told him.

Smith glanced up at the ladder. "Yes, I see. We can repair that. I'll have to ask you folks to back off and give us some room. We'll need to survey the area for evidence. May we count on your cooperation, Sheriff?"

"Uh—sure thing."

"Good. Then please get these civilians to a safe distance."

"Aren't—aren't you going to ask me what happened?" Mabel said in a small voice.

"Are you a witness?"

"Yes."

Smith snapped his fingers. "Mr. Jones. Take this girl aside and question her, please."

An unsmiling young man said, "Yessir." He took off his hood and said, "This way," to Mabel. He wasn't old—mid-twenties, maybe—with rusty-red hair, trimmed close, and a face so homely it was almost attractive. He opened a back door for Mabel and said, "We'll talk in here."

The next half hour was later hard for Mabel to remember. Mr. Jones had her sit beside in the truck while he started a voice recorder. He got her to tell him her name, her address, and then said, "Now, Miss Pines, just tell me in your own words what you witnessed."

"It was Pacifica," Mabel said haltingly. "Pacifica Northwest. We've all been so worried about her. She's been missing since yesterday. She was up on the circular walk around the base of the tower, just standing there when I saw her. I yelled to her that I was coming to help and I climbed about halfway up and a r-rung b-broke under my f-foot and I heard her s-scream, and—" Mabel gulped hard—"and I s-saw Pacifica f-falling!"

"Did she jump? Was she pushed?"

"I couldn't s-see how it hap-happened. S-she was on the far s-side of the tank."

"Did you see anyone up there with her?"

"No. Nobody. Just Pacifica."

"Are you sure it was her?"

Mabel gave him a resentful glance. "Uh-huh. Yes, I knew—know her really well. It was P-Pacifica. H-how is she? Is she gonna be all right?"

Without emotion, Jones replied, "I have no information about that."

Stan pounded once, hard, on the truck door. "Hey!"

Jones opened the door. "Yes, sir?"

"That's my niece you got there," Stan said. "I want to make sure you're not scarin' her."

"Sir, I have no intention of frightening Mabel. I have just a few more questions." When Stan didn't move, Jones sighed. "You can listen in if you wish." He turned back to Mabel. "Do you know any reason why Miss Northwest might have been feeling depressed or sui—"

Mabel was shaking her head. "No. No. She doesn't get sad, she gets _mad._ I mean, it wouldn't be like her at all! S-she's usually kinda a take-charge girl, you know?"

Jones nodded. "I see. But I have to ask this: Do you believe she might have deliberately jumped?"

"No!" Mabel yelled. "No. Not Pacifica. No way."

"You seem very sure."

"I am."

"Believe her," Grunkle Stan said. "Mabel's the most honest person I know."

"Sir—"

A car roared up, and Mabel recognized the Northwests' limo. It stopped, Wellington leaped out, but before he could open the doors, from the backseat three people emerged: Preston Northwest, ashen-faced, his wife Priscilla, looking haggard and frightened, and a tall, trim young man in khakis, a white shirt, and a light blue sweater vest—a teenager taller even than Wendy Corduroy—with a handsome shock of auburn hair and the chiseled features you see on statues of patriots in New England.

"What happened?" Preston demanded, as they hurried to the truck.

Jones stepped out. "Sir, I—"

"Where is our daughter?" Priscilla asked, grabbing him by the yellow sleeve of his coveralls.

The radio chirped, and Jones said, "One moment, please." He opened the front door and reached for the microphone. "Jones here."

"Smith here. We've examined the tower, nothing significant here. Brown has repaired the ladder. We're coming down."

"Roger that." Jones said to Mabel, "You're free to go. All right, everybody, we need to move you back. The team's coming down and they'll have evidence bags and equipment—pretty cumbersome stuff to handle on a ladder. For safety, let's step back to the far side of the limousine, please."

They all crowded back. The men, indistinguishable from each other in their gear, climbed down one after the other and then hustled their equipment back into the truck. Smith split off from the group, came over and introduced himself. "I'm Preston Northwest, Pacifica's father," Preston said. "This is my wife, Priscilla."

"Sir, Ma'am. I'm sorry this happened. Kids shouldn't venture up on these things, but—well, they're kids."

"Where is our daughter?" wailed Priscilla.

"She's been taken to a hospital, Ma'am. Your sheriff will have the full details."

"Is she all right? Is she badly hurt?" Preston asked.

"I don't' have any information, sorry," Smith told him.

"Sir!" Jones called, "the team's buttoned the truck up."

"We have to go now," Smith said. He reached inside his jumpsuit and produced a card. "Here, Mr. Northwest. You can get in touch with me any time at this number. We didn't see your daughter—we arrived after she'd been taken in for medical care. But let me know if there's anything I can do for you. In the meantime—talk to your sheriff. He'll put you in touch with the hospital."

"Yes," Preston said, sounding numb. "Uh. Thank—thank you."

The young man asked, "Are you one of Pacifica's friends?"

Mabel nodded and climbed down from the truck. "Yes. I'm Mabel Pines. I saw her on the tower."

"Well, thanks for trying to help her," the young man said with a sad kind of smile. "We appreciate that. Are you her grandfather?" he asked Stanley.

"Great-uncle. Stanley Pines," he said.

The young man nodded. "So good to meet you," he said courteously. "My name's Northby Northwest."

* * *

 


	7. Sabotaged

* * *

As afternoon shaded into evening, Blubs and Durland first shooed the gawkers away, and when the street was clear, the two of them strung the yellow "CRIME SCENE – DO NOT CROSS" tape just as Dipper rode up on his bike. He hopped off. "Hi," he said.

Blubs turned around, his gray mustache drooping. "Hi, Dipper. Sad, ain't it."

"Yes," Dipper said. "So—can I cross the tape and go up and look at the tower?"

Blubs chuckled. "Well, you helped us with that gigantic bat and all, so I don't see why not!" He lifted up the center of the tape and Dipper ducked under it.

Dipper nodded at him. "Thanks, man. I won't take anything, but I'm gonna make some pictures."

"Photographs!" Blubs said. "Now, that is a good idea! That's something we probably should've thought about. Hey, Dipper, would you do me a favor and email copies of those pictures to us at the station?"

"Uh, yeah. Sure thing," Dipper promised.

Durland perked up. "Whoo-wee! At last I kin download email with none of them words to read! I _like_ pictures!"

Blubs smiled and patted his deputy's shoulder. "Then you can knock yourself out when they come in." He turned back to Dipper. "Well, Durland and I have things to do, so we'll leave you to your photography. Be careful, now!"

As the two got into their squad car and drove away, Dipper climbed the ladder, noticing the new rung halfway up. He emerged on the windy walkway. Unlike his sister, he didn't find heights much of a problem. He stopped at the base of the second ladder, the metal one affixed to the side of the tank that led up to the maintenance hatch in the tower roof. "Interesting." He took out his phone and made several shots of the access ladder base—and then he tucked his phone away and climbed up to the roof and the hatch.

The hatchway was heavy, but he opened it and swung it outward, then climbed up the last few rungs and leaned over, shining his flashlight down into the tank. Weird rippling greeny-gold reflections squirmed over the walls and ceiling, and he heard constant echoing drips.

The tank looked to be about three-quarters full. The access ladder continued on the inside, leading down into the water and probably to the submerged floor. Dipper took a deep breath, crossed over, and moved down the ladder—a little slippery!—to within a foot of the water surface.

Before being pumped into the tank, the water was filtered and strained and disinfected—there was a strong smell of chlorine, like a recently-treated swimming pool would have—and in the flashlight beam, the liquid looked crystal clear. Hanging on with a hooked elbow, Dipper shone his light straight down.

The whole tankful of water took on a kind of green glow. Dipper saw only water, nothing else. He could make out the outlet valve at the bottom center of the tank, which fed the town's water-supply lines, and the emergency valve across from him, which would relieve pressure if an emergency occurred.

Nothing floated in the water or on the surface, no leaves, no debris, no . . . body.

Grunting, Dipper climbed back up. Leaning over the lip of the hatch and gazing down, he noticed something he hadn't before, and something he had. A sizable puddle of watering had formed around the base of the access ladder—that was what he'd photographed already—but from this vantage point, he saw other wet marks, now fading fast. Halfway down the ladder, in fact with his foot resting on the repaired rung, he took out his camera and, hanging on with his left hand, used his right to snap several more photos of the platform below.

Down on the walkway, he walked all the way around the tower. Nothing. He looked down, but couldn't see any trace of where Pacifica must have hit if she had leaped or fallen over the rail. _There should be something, scuff marks, maybe even blood, but there isn't._

He paused when he reached the foot of the access ladder again. He put his sneaker-shod foot down and studied the marks on the wood. "Hmm."

Frowning, he slowly climbed down the main ladder, looking down all the time—the heights really were no big deal, he thought—and spotted something. "Careless," he muttered.

He hopped off the ladder and stooped to pick up the round cylinder of wood. The broken rung, still lying where it had fallen when Mabel stepped on it.

Except—he stared hard at the ends—it wasn't broken. Not exactly.

It had been sabotaged.

Clean cuts showed at each end, where the rung had been pinned into the uprights. Someone must have sawed nearly all the way through the rung on both sides. It had been strong enough to remain in place until someone put their full weight on it, and then it became a death trap waiting for—someone. Not Mabel, surely—who would have guessed that she'd show up and climb the ladder? But someone.

_I told them I wouldn't take anything._

Dipper carefully put the rung down where he had found it and took a photo that included the foot of the tower ladder—so its position could be determined—and then made close-up shots of both ends, showing the bright wood where a fine-toothed saw had bitten through the rung. _I'll tell them about it. That's all I can do._

He climbed on his bike and rode back to the Mystery Shack. He was not surprised to find his Grunkle Stan's car in the lot, but parked in a different place. He would have gone back to pick up Ford.

Stanford Pines was just getting back into driving again. He had spent thirty years in dimensions where there were no cars, and his skills had become—not rusted, exactly. More like corroded to nothing. He had already totaled his black Lincoln, having forgotten momentarily that the brake was to the left, the accelerator to the right. Fortunately, he wasn't hurt, although his rough trip along a roadside ditch left the tailpipe, muffler, and a good part of the drive train behind, and the engine wound up ingesting more dirt and grass than it could survive. Pity, because though it was thirty-five years old, it had only two thousand miles on the odometer.

Now Stan was reluctantly letting him practice in his El Diablo, but recently he'd begun making strong suggestions that Stanford buy a used car, preferably one already battered and beaten up, before being confident enough to apply for a new driver's license. Wendy had overheard heard one such suggestion and had chipped in one of her own: "Get a tank, man. They're fun to drive!"

Anyway, though seeing Stan's car didn't faze Dipper, the "CLOSED-COME AGAIN" sign on the Shack door did surprise him. It was too early for closing time.

But when he went inside and heard sobbing, he understood. It was coming from Soos's and Melody's bedroom. A miserable-looking Stan and Ford sat on the sofa in the parlor. They looked up as Dipper came in.

Stan said, "Uh—Dipper—"

He trailed off, evidently unable to finish.

Gently, Stanford said, "I just heard, Dipper. Pacifica didn't make it."

Dipper took a deep breath. "Where's Mabel?"

"Up in the attic. She said she needed to be there."

"Don't move. I'll be back."

Dipper trotted up the stairs. Mabel was sitting on the floor, her back against her old bed, her sweater—the old shooting-star one—pulled up over her head. She was rocking from side to side, moaning a little.

"Hey, Sis," Dipper said softly, sitting beside her.

"She's dead, Dipper," Mabel said. "Grunkle Ford called about her."

"Mabel, come downstairs. There's something real important."

"No. I don't want to be around people."

Dipper got up and took his laptop from the table. "Mabel, if you care about Pacifica, come with me. You'll understand." When she didn't respond, he said, "Trust me," and held out his hand.

She turtle-peeped from the sweater, her eyes swollen and red. She reached out her hand, and when Dipper took it, it was cold. "Come on," he said softly. "I think you'll feel better."

So they went downstairs. "I gotta show you something," Dipper said, using a USB cable to attach his phone. "Takes a minute to download these. Just hang on."

Mabel looked as miserable as he could ever recall. Stan moved to sit beside her and put his arm around her shoulder and she leaned into him. "I should have been faster," she whispered.

"OK," Dipper said. "Now, let me find the right ones—these. Take a look."

"What is it?" Stan asked. "Abstract art?"

Dipper shook his head. "This is the side of the water tower, see? We're looking straight down from the hatch under the roof overhang. This is the access ladder. But look at that puddle of water there. It goes all the way across the catwalk, from the tower to the outer edge. Now I'm gonna enlarge this to look at these dark marks."

"Footprints?" Ford asked.

"Yep," Dipper said. "The Forestry Service guys walked through the puddle, and they left wet tracks on the wood. They're drying fast, but visible enough so you can make out prints of at least four different people—different sizes and sole-tread patterns, see?"

"Why'd water spill outa the tower?" Stan asked. "Spring a leak or somethin'?"

"No. I'll tell you what I think happened," Dipper said, "but first, look at this footprint—wait a second—" he manipulated the enlarged image to put it in the center of the screen—"this one here."

"What about it?" Ford asked.

"It's smaller than mine," Dipper said. "And look at the tread pattern. It's brand-new. It's a shoe that was just bought."

"Oh!" Mabel said with a gasp. "Dipper! I just realized something! Those shoes that Pacifica bought—one of them was a black pair—the same pair she wore to the puppet funeral!"

"And that was _before_ she went shopping," Dipper said. "She took off her old shoes and put them in one of the boxes, and—"

"She wore one of the new pairs!"

"Bingo!" Dipper said.

Ford winced. "Bingo? Do kids still say that?"

"Dorks do," Mabel said, preoccupied. "Wait, the Forestry guys only showed up after the ambulance left, so—"

"So Pacifica was alive and on her feet," Dipper said.

"This—makes no sense," Ford objected.

"Something weird is going on," Dipper said. "And I don't necessarily mean something supernatural. Pacifica didn't fall off the tower. I suspect she tossed a—a life-sized doll, a what-do-you-call-it—"

"Mannequin," Ford offered.

"Yeah, OK, tossed it over to shock Mabel. Then when Mabel was hanging frozen on the ladder, not even able to open her eyes, Pacifica climbed up into the tank and went inside the hatch. I think she probably slipped and fell into the water. She's a good swimmer, so she just went back to the ladder and hung on. Then after the sirens and all, the Forestry people came up to the catwalk, she heard them, and she climbed up after they made sure Mabel couldn't see. She came down, they put one of their jumpsuits on her—but she sloshed a lot of water climbing down first—and then she went down in the crowd. In the yellow jumpsuit and hood, she'd look like a short member of the team."

"That means the Forestry Service men were in on some kind of deception," Ford said, frowning.

"And also the ambulance guys," Dipper said. "And look at these pictures—the ladder was sabotaged. See? The rung that broke had already been sawed nearly all the way through. That must have happened after Pacifica climbed up to the tower—otherwise she would've broken it. I guess whoever talked her into going up there must've done it."

Thoughtfully, Ford said, "Maybe even the EMTs. Odd that they're based fifty miles away but just happened to be in the area, or so the 911 operator told Blubs."

"I'll bet they weren't real EMTs," Stan growled. "And I'll bet the Forestry Service guys were phonies, too. Hah! I lived in this burg for thirty years! The tower's not on any Forest Service land. It's municipal land."

"But—why?" Ford asked.

"I—don't know," Dipper confessed. "But for some reason—probably under the control of the guys who were masquerading—Pacifica was gonna fake her own death."

"She did a pretty good job," Stan said.

"Dipper," Mabel whispered, "are you sure? Are you sure she's not dead? 'Cause Grunkle Ford—"

"I called the trauma center," Ford explained. "I said I was representing the family. They put me on hold for several minutes, then transferred me to a Dr. MacGuffin, who told me the patient had succumbed to her injuries. He said he had already notified Mr. Northwest. He told me that the body couldn't be released until after an autopsy."

"Huh. Don't sound professional to me. Just a sec," Stan said. He took his phone out and said, "Gimme the number of the nearest trauma center."

The female voice on his phone chirpily told him the number. Ford shook his head. "Computer telephones," he murmured, sounding completely geeked out. "When I went away, that was the stuff of _Star Trek_!"

"Shh." Stan punched the number in. After a moment, he said in a surprisingly smooth and educated—and faintly Hindi-accented—voice, "Yes, you may help me indeed. This is Doctor Agotcha. I wish to consult urgently, please, with your Doctor MacGuffin. Will you kindly connect me, please?" A pause, and then he said, "You are certain of that? I am so sorry, I must have been misinformed. Yes, I will check the number. Thank you, sucker." He hung up. "Ford, there ain't any Doc MacGuffin associated with the center. They never heard of him. We been had."

Ford's face was scrunched in thought. "You know, I sort of thought at the time that MacGuffin's voice was somehow familiar. I'm not sure even now, but it sounded a lot like. . . oh, yes, that government man whose memory we wiped last year—the guy with the widow's peak and the heavy mustache?"

"Oh, my God," Stan groaned. "Agent Powers? Gah, I spent like a whole day being questioned by him. He's got, like, no sense of humor, no sense of style, and he's so darned literal about everything!"

"Those two guys who investigate supernatural stuff?" Mabel asked. "Yuck! That Agent Trigger was gonna turn me and Dipper over to Child Services! Lucky I managed to force him to run the car off the road, roll it down the hill, and smash it into a tree."

"Yeah, that was lucky— _wait, what?"_ Stan asked.

"Long story," Dipper said. "This has to have something to do with that weird bird behavior as well as Pacifica's disappearance. Maybe even with that invisible trout!"

"But if Pacifica's alive, where is she?" Stan asked.

"That," Dipper said, jumping out of his chair, "is just what we're gonna find out!"

But—

The crash of the back door stopped him in his tracks. A man in black SWAT armor charged into the Shack, his weapon already leveled.

Four more spilled in through the front door.

And as two of them went into the Ramirez bedroom, Agent Powers himself came stalking in, a grim expression on his face. "Mabel Pines," he said. "You'll have to come with us. You know too much."

And at his shoulder stood Agent Trigger, who pointed, scowling, at Mabel. He repeated, "Too. Much!"

* * *

 


	8. Strangeness on a Train

**From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _They hung a "Closed for Renovation" sign up on the Mystery Shack and herded us all into closed six-passenger vans. Mabel, Ford, Stan, and I were in one, and Abuelita, Melody and Soos were in another. Wendy had already left for home when the SWAT guys arrived, so she was still on the loose—and from what Agent Powers said, I don't think they were even looking for her._

_Here's the really crazy thing: We rode in that van, with blacked-out windows, for over an hour with no idea of where we were heading. Heck, when we got there, we didn't know where we were! I only found out later._

_They took us to the old Mossy Run train station, fifty miles from home. Because of the blacked-out windows, I didn't see any of this at first, but this description of where we were taken is what I later saw and found out about it._

_It's maybe a mile out of the little town and it's been deserted for about seventy years—the rails are all torn up now and there's no train service through the town these days. The short street winding from the highway down a hill to the station has been chained off and marked NO TRESPASSERS. It's asphalt and very beat-up, as if it's just eroding away. Brush and weeds have grown up so tall that you can't even see anything of the station from the highway._

_But if you get past the chain and drive down the beat-up street, you'll discover that the whole compound is inside a tall chain-link fence with razor wire strung around the top and DANGER CONDEMNED signs wired on about every ten feet. On rusty, disused sidings nearby—still inside the fence—are about a dozen old train cars, mostly Pullmans, I think they're called._

_But—all this stuff is actually part of a secret base for this undercover organization! When we climbed out of the vans, we first found ourselves inside a big hollowed-out brick building, which turned out to be the old freight depot, completely gutted and now a garage that will hold eight of the vans, two full-sized buses, a couple of pickup trucks and two panel trucks, and about eight cars, three of them police cruisers, only without any insignia. They hustled us outside and past the passenger depot, so then we finally saw the layout._

_From outside the fence, the old train station looks like a couple of abandoned, crumbling buildings, but as we later learned, the passenger depot is actually a hive of offices, computer rooms, listening posts, and all you'd expect from some secret snoopy government outfit. And the train cars are like living quarters! They put me, Mabel, Ford, and Stan in one of these. There were two big bedroom compartments, with bunk beds in each one. I didn't know this at the time, but they put Abuelita, Soos, and Melody in another._

_After we had been locked in for about twenty minutes, a guy showed up and called for Mabel. Then one by one, they took us from the train car and into the old depot to interrogate us. They wouldn't answer any of our own questions. Mabel's only question was "Where's Pacifica?" She repeated it so many times that three different interrogators gave up and asked to be relieved because they couldn't take it any longer. But none of them would answer her question—or, later, any of mine, Stan's, or Ford's._

_When she got back, she just had time to tell us that they most wanted to know if Pacifica had called her to alert her of the plan. She didn't know there WAS any plan, but she didn't even tell the agents that much. Stan got up to pace, and Mabel suddenly said, "What's that on the back of your jacket?"_

_It turned out that a little round black-plastic-silver-metally thing about the size of a dime had been pinned to the hem of Grunkle Stan's jacket, about the middle of his back. Ford took out a pocket notebook and wrote IT'S A BUG! Stan made a sour face and under that he wrote THOSE DANGED FORESTRY SERVICE GUYS MUST HAVE TAGGED ME WITH IT!_

_So that was how they had traced us. They must have been listening in to everything Grunkle Stan and the rest of us said back in the Shack! And when we started to talk about the footprint and knowing Pacifica was still alive, they moved in._

_Not five minutes after we found the bug, the same guy—a guard, I guess—that had come for Mabel took me to a cubicle where Agents Trigger and Powers questioned me._

_I couldn't get them to believe that I was acting on my own when, after I'd heard from Grunkle Stan about Pacifica's supposed "accident," I biked over to the water tower and noticed the clues they'd left. "Who put you up to this, son?" Powers asked. "Nothing will happen to you if you tell us the truth. Who tipped you off?"_

_"Nobody!"_

_With a sneer, Trigger narrowed his eyes and asked, "Are you really that clever?"_

_I felt my face getting hot, but it was more anger than embarrassment. "I guess I am! At least I'm smart enough to know you're breaking the law. You have no right to keep us here!"_

_Powers said, "On the contrary, we work for the government, under special emergency legal provisions. You should cooperate, son. We mean you and your sister and your uncles and friends no harm. It's simply that we have to keep you imprisoned to protect your freedom."_

_So that's a thing, I guess._

_"Look," I said, "because of what I saw and found, we know that Pacifica Northwest didn't jump or fall off that tower. You don't even have to tell me where she is. Just let us know that she's all right, that's all. If one of your friends was missing, wouldn't you want to know?"_

_Trigger nearly punched me in the chest with his finger. "We're not authorized to have friends, buddy!"_

_Powers put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him back. "Don't scare the boy, Trigger. Son, all you need to know is we're taking care of the girl in question. Now—what made you suspicious about her accident?"_

_And so it went on, with them asking me questions I really couldn't or sometimes plain wouldn't answer, mostly because of the sneaky way they asked them._

_Finally, after they asked over and over what I knew and how I knew it, Powers showed me a photocopy of an old drawing of a strange-looking ring. I think it was what is called a signet ring—one that has a flat round surface on the outside of the ring that can be pressed into soft wax to leave a design._

_The image looked like an old steel-plate engraving, like it might have been copied out of a book from the 18th or 19th century, and the ring it pictured appeared to be an ancient artifact or at least an antique. It had that sort of battered look to it._

_The angle of the drawing made the design kind of hard to see, but it looked to me like a six-pointed star, a Star of David design, with—I think—some Hebrew letters inscribed inside each point and the hexagonal center, but they were really too small for me to be sure they were letters of any kind. "Look carefully at this picture, son. Have you recently seen a ring like this?" Powers asked._

_"No," I said firmly. "Not recently and not ever. Where was it stolen from?"_

_The two agents looked at each other, and then Trigger, who I think was supposed to be the bad cop, leaned in close, grabbed me by the front of my shirt, and growled, "How'd you know it was stolen, punk?"_

_"I guessed. Why else would you lawmen be looking for it?" I asked. "Hey, let go of my shirt."_

_"You think you're such a smart guy," he said with a sneer, giving me a shove as he pushed me against the back of my chair._

_I tugged my shirt back into place and shrugged. "Only by comparison to some people."_

_They looked puzzled. Frowning a little, Powers said, "That must be a joke, because I don't get it."_

_The two refused to explain what the ring was or to tell me anything more about the drawing, and pretty soon after that they let me go. The guard took me back to the Pullman. By then it was really late afternoon, with long shadows stretching out from the red western sky._

_Stan was next, but they didn't keep him long. On the pad he wrote PLAYED DUMB. Ford gave him a thumbs-up._

_Ford was the next and last one taken over to be interrogated, and he was gone for a long time—I mean probably three or four hours. It was hard to say, because they had confiscated our phones and even Grunkle Stan's watch, and we didn't have any TV cable service (though they said they'd run some videos for us later on). Anyway, the sun was still just above the horizon when they took him and it was full night when they brought him back._

_After he had been gone for about an hour or maybe even more, they brought us some dinner (chain-restaurant fried chicken, with mashed potatoes and coleslaw, along with sodas and slices of apple pie). We ate our shares of it a good while before Ford got back, and when he returned his serving was cold, though he ate it anyway. Except for the pie. Mabel claimed all the pies. Anyhow, by then it was dark outside._

_Stan stood up and said, "Well-p, I'm goin' to the can. This feels like the first movement from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony—gonna be a big one. Ya might wanna light a few matches. I'm gonna be in there a while!" He went to the bathroom and came back without his jacket. He pointed to the TV, and Mabel switched it on. They were playing a video, some dumb high-school musical movie, and Stan went over and turned it to ear-splitting volume. He mimed to Mabel._

_"Oh, boy, this is the coolest video!" Mabel yelled. "I'm gonna rock along with it!"_

_We all sat around the table, right under the TV—it was mounted high on the wall—and leaned close. Stan said in a low voice, "That racket oughta cover us, in case this room is bugged, too, which it probably is. So where do we stand, and where do we go from here?"_

_I told them about the sketch they'd shown me. Nobody else had seen it. Ford wouldn't even talk, but wrote on his pad and underlined the words: SOUNDS LIKE THE SEAL OF SOLOMON. That didn't mean anything to me. Under that he added "The owner of the seal CAN CONTROL BIRDS AND ANIMALS!" He set fire to the slip of paper and let it burn to ashes in a saucer on the table._

_Mabel gasped and put her hand over her mouth. Stan nodded grimly. And I began to see the connection between a few things myself._

_Stan motioned for the pad and took the pen. He wrote "We have to bust out of here."_

_Mabel took it and scrawled "First we have to find Pacifica!"_

_I took the pen and added, "And Soos, Melody, and Abuelita."_

_Ford nodded and so did Stan. With his familiar roguish grin, Stan put out his hand. Ford clapped his six-fingered hand on top of Stan's. I put mine on Ford's, and Mabel put hers on mine. It was like we were swearing an oath. We were going to find Pacifica, and we were going to find our friends, and we were getting out of that place._

_So it was decided._

_The only minor detail we didn't know was—how?_

* * *

 


	9. Frenzied

 

* * *

 

Ford was asleep in the bottom bunk. Mabel and Dipper had bedded down in the other bedroom compartment. Stanley sat in the living room/dining room area of the Pullman, leaned back in the chair, and said, "Hey, jerks. I know you're listenin' to me. Look, I don't want to see any dopey kiddie shows on TV, and I got insomnia. If you want me to cooperate, one of you come an' play cards with me."

He hummed to himself for maybe five minutes before he heard the door lock click. A middle-aged man stood there. "How'd you know we could hear you?"

Stan grinned. "It's your train. I figured you'd bug it. I'm Stanley Pines."

"Agent Gunderson."

"What's your game, Gunderson?"

"How are you on gin rummy?"

"Love it. Ya any good?"

Gunderson, whose craggy face made him look avuncular rather than menacing, smiled. "I guess we'll see."

"Ya wanna play here, or—I mean, my niece and nephew are asleep in there, and we hafta be quiet, is all."

Gunderson shrugged. "We can use an interrogation room. It's pretty dead after ten p.m. here. We won't bother anybody there."

"Sounds good. I assume ya got cards?"

"Of course we have cards. We have to pass the time somehow."

The two men walked through the night across the sidings—Gunderson cautioned, "Watch your step, Mr. Pines—you can't see the track in the shadow here."

"Thanks, Mr. Gunderson. And it's Stan, if ya don't mind."

"Stan. OK. Me, I'm Walt."

Stan looked around as they entered the old depot. All the windows had been blocked from the inside with dark panels—but they were one-way. Those inside could see out, but from outside it looked like a dreary abandoned building with no light showing anywhere.

"This'll do," Gunderson said, unlocking a door. "Have a seat. I'll get the cards."

"Thanks." Stan looked at the battered table, the three straight chairs.

"It's just an interrogation room," Gunderson said.

Stan chuckled. "I know. I seen my share of these, ya know."

"I read your dossier. I have to say that was an impressive escape from the Colombian prison."

"Yeah, I was young an' hot-headed then. Never stopped to think I coulda been killed. I'm a lot slower now. And more careful." Stan settled into one of the chairs, found it rocked a little, and tried a second one. It was better.

Walt left him—without locking the door, Stan noted—and was gone for a few minutes. When he returned, Stan asked, "So, we playin' for money?"

"You don't have any money."

"Yeah, you guys impounded it. OK, so—what we playin' for? Just points?"

"Give me a minute." Walt was again gone for a short time. When he returned, he held a paper cup. He emptied it onto the table: Pennies. "We chuck our spare change into the coffee fund," he explained. "Nobody ever takes out the pennies. Get half of them for your stake."

Stan swept them to his side of the table as Walt started to sit down, but Stan said, "That one has a gimpy leg."

Walt pulled the other chair over. "Thanks." He tossed an unwrapped deck of cards onto the table. "Open 'em and take out the jokers, and then shuffle. We'll cut for deal."

Stan unwrapped them—a standard deck, not marked, he saw—and after shuffling, he set the deck face-down. "Cut."

Walt cut and got a Queen of Hearts. Stan cut and got a King of Diamonds. "My deal," he said. He took the deck, reshuffled, and then dealt out ten cards to each of them.

Walt's eyebrows rose fractionally. Stan pretended to study his cards but he was thinking, A tell. You'll do that every time you have a good hand. Which was a good thing to know, because he wasn't at all sure that he could continue to fake his deals so that he knew every card going onto the table. Right now Walt had almost a dream hand—two aces and a trey, and then a run of 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, with an odd Jack and King. And the face-up card was another ace.

As Stan had intended, Walt won the first hand easily. And the second. Stan let himself win the third, but by a squeaker. They settled in, with Walt getting more and more interested in the game and winning more than he lost. At one in the morning, Stan said, "You're too good for me, Walt. Where'd ya learn to play like that?"

"Ah, it's partly skill and mostly luck," Walt said. As they'd played, they'd talked about family. Walt was married, with a grown son and daughter. The son was a veterinarian, the daughter in college. Son was married, one grandchild, a little girl of three. Walt actually apologized for having taken Dipper and Mabel into custody. "We had to do it," he said. "I can't say anything, but there's a big operation going on, and your family was threatening to expose it."

"We kinda blundered into it, sorry. And Dipper and Mabel are good kids, so please keep that in mind. Ya gonna let us go soon?" Stan asked.

"I wish I could tell you, but I don't know. If we wrap it up, you'll get to go home right away. But you'll never know more about it than you do right now."

"Eh, so what? As long as we get to go free." Stan stretched. Both men had removed their jackets and draped them over the extra chair. Standing up, Stan said, "Well, I'm outa pennies, an' I think I might be able to sleep now." He picked up the gray jacket. "Here ya go. Thanks, Walt. You seem like a good man. I'm sorry we met under these circumstances, but it was a pleasure playin' gin with you."

"Same here," Walt said. "I'll walk you back. Have to lock you in, of course."

"Yeah, I understand."

The railroad yard was in full darkness, and they all but groped their way. Stan said his good-nights at the door, stepped up onto the platform and into the Pullman car, and Walt closed the door. Stan heard the snick of the lock and held onto the handle inside. Walt tugged—but Stan held firm—and then he heard the crunch of Walt's footsteps as he walked away.

Grinning, Stanley quietly tried the door, and it opened. The old chewing-gum-and-part-of-a-plastic-fork in the lock socket trick. He stepped out and quickly walked toward the fence, with the Pullman cars between him and the depot.

He took Walt's cell phone out—it had been child's play to fish it from the jacket pocket—and found that Walt, silly boy, had not encrypted the phone with a password. Trusting fellow.

Stan punched in a number and listened. The phone rang three times, and then a sleepy voice said, "Hello? Who's this?"

"Wendy, it's me. Listen, we been taken prisoner, me, Ford, the kids, Soos, Melody, Mrs. Ramirez. You up for springin' us?"

Wendy suddenly sounded fully awake: "What do you need?"

He explained where they were. "Listen, get over to the Shack an' take my El Diablo."

"I don't have a key—"

"We ain't got time for you to be coy. I know you can hot-wire it." He told her where they were and asked her to be at the entrance to the old street in two hours.

"Gotcha," she said.

"Attagirl."

Then he walked back toward the depot and laid the phone down in the deepest shadows on the tracks. Walt would miss it, would probably be able to find it with an app, and would figure he'd dropped it on the way over or back. Then Stan went back to the train car to wake the others and get ready to make their run.

Ford objected, of course: "We should reason with these people."

"Yeah, yeah," Stan said—they were standing in the bathroom with the sink faucet and shower both running full force and conversing in whispers—"but let's reason with 'em after we're outa this dump."

He had everyone sit quietly—"No talkin', knuckleheads," he whispered—and he slipped out, armed with a small piece of metal he had wrested from a window screen in the railway car.

Then Stan went along the line of Pullman cars until he heard the distinctive sound of Soos's snoring. Very carefully, and working entirely in the dark, he managed to use the metal strip to slip the door lock. "Shoulda used a deadbolt," he muttered.

He found the bunkbeds where Soos, on the top, and Melody, on the bottom, were sleeping. He woke Soos and whispered, "C'mon, get your family together and we're getting' outa here. No talkin'—place is bugged. Be outside this car in two minutes."

When he hurried back to their Pullman car, he found Mabel holding a note: "WHAT ABOUT PACIFICA?"

He shook his head. "Don't know where she is," he mouthed so she could read his lips. "I'll come back for her after I get you guys to safety."

They met the Ramirezes and then skirted the fence, avoiding the only light—a weak streetlight over the gate. "There's probably a code to open it," Ford murmured.

"Yeah, there is—on the outside. In here, just a green button. Hope it ain't too loud!"

It was pretty loud—the gate rolled back on wheels. As soon as they were all through, it closed again—and Stan unlaced one of his shoes and tied the gate shut. "Might buy us a minute," he said. "Hustle! We gotta be at the road when Wendy shows up!"

They stumbled up the eroded, broken asphalt street, tripping now and then but keeping quiet. When they reached the highway, Stan said in a somewhat louder voice, "How ya doin', Soos? Everybody OK?"

"Yeah, Mr. Pines, but why'd they take us to this place? They wouldn't tell us anything. I, like, let them know that Melody is expecting, but they just acted like that was no big deal!"

"It all has to do with the Northwests somehow. We don't understand it either. But we ain't gonna find out as prisoners."

They waited in tall weeds for what seemed like an hour or more. Still no alarm came from the compound down the hill. Dipper said, "Grunkle Stan, I think you did it!"

"We'll know for sure when we get away," Stan told him.

The wide-spaced headlights of the old El Diablo finally showed in the distance. Dipper stepped to the edge of the road and flagged Wendy down. They all piled in—kind of a tight fit, but they made it—and Stan said, "Good goin', Wendy! Now go, go, go!"

"Where to, dude?" she asked.

"Away from here!"

Wendy wrenched the car around in a U-turn that made them all lurch, and then floored it. The powerful engine surged, and the car shot forward—for about five hundred feet. Then, a quarter of a mile away down the road, headlights flared—a whole row of cop cars, side by side, blocking the road.

"They've got us!" Ford said from the back seat.

"Not yet!" Wendy said through clenched teeth. "Hang tight, everybody!" She accelerated—then braked while spinning the wheel.

"Whoa!" Mabel yelled as the car spun in a complete 180. "Let's do that again!'

The tires screamed, and they set off in the opposite direction—

Only to run into another identical roadblock.

"Dang!" Wendy said. "Permission to crash through?"

"Uh-uh," Stan said wearily. "Not with the kids in the car. Not with Melody."

"Yeah, right," Wendy growled. "Well, I got my axe—"

"That's Agent Powers," Dipper said as a man walked toward the car. "But who's that with him?"

They stared at the two men. Powers wore his customary black suit. Beside him a skinny old man, taller than he was and wearing big black horn-rimmed glasses, kept step. He wore a brown fedora hat and a long trench coat.

"That almost looks like—but it can't be," Ford said.

Powers seemed to be arguing with the older man, but at last he stopped about ten feet in front of the hood, while the older, taller fellow came to the driver's side. Wendy rolled down the window. "Dude, let us through," she said.

The man—he had a surprisingly kindly face—smiled. "I'm sorry, Miss Corduroy, but that isn't possible yet." He peered into the dark car. "Stanford Pines, are you really in there?"

"Professor?" Ford asked, sounding astonished. "Professor—"

"No names, please, Dr. Pines," the man said genially. "I have been a Professor Emeritus for nearly twenty years and I've taken a second job in—well, my old subject, analysis. I seem to find myself running a clandestine department. Professor will do."

Ford opened the back door and climbed out. "It's good to see you again, sir!" he said. "You're looking well!"

"Rubbish. I'm looking thirty-five years older than the last time you saw me, and I was no picture then. Dr. Pines, my crew here will do you no harm, I promise. You know, I followed your career until you rather dropped out of sight. Your published papers were astonishing. Are you still investigating occult phenomena?"

"I am, sir."

"Then I am officially hiring you as a consultant. You won't refuse, and you will be compensated."

Ford straightened. "On the condition that you set my family and friends free."

"Oh, I intend to," the Professor said. "Perhaps not immediately, but soon. It will have to be within the next day or two."

"What about Pacifica?" Mabel yelled from inside the car.

"Ah, that will be young Miss Pines. Mabel, isn't it? Mabel, tomorrow morning you will see Miss Northwest. She's perfectly well. Not happy, Lord knows, but well."

"I'm great-uncle Ford's research assistant," Dipper insisted. "I go where he goes!"

"Master Pines," the Professor said. "I believe you prefer the name Dipper to your actual name. Well, Dipper, we shall see. Now, Stanley Pines—you, sir?"

Stan had climbed out of the passenger side. "That's me."

The Professor came around the car and extended his hand. "Well played, Mr. Pines. I wouldn't have thought you could have pulled it off. Agent Gunderson is ashamed of himself for having been so easily tricked, but I suspect he was tricked by a master, so he shan't be seriously punished. Do you know, when I got the alarm about your evasion, you were already outside the compound. It took some fast moving to make sure we could cut off your escape routes. I admire your skills, sir. I could have used a fellow like you a decade ago in Ukraine."

Soos had also climbed out of the back. "Mr. Professor dude, this is nice and all, but my wife is, like, expecting."

"Is she having any difficulty?" the Professor asked, sounding quietly concerned.

"No," Melody said from inside the car. "I'm fine. Soos worries."

"Then I offer my congratulations," the Professor told Soos. "We have medical personnel available if she has even the slightest discomfort, Mr. Ramirez. Now, then, if you will go with these gentlemen, we plan to take you to more comfortable quarters. Tomorrow morning, I will explain to you just where we stand and what this is all about. And of course we will return your possessions." He chuckled. "And, Mr. Pines, there will be no bugs. I promise. Dr. Pines, I'll ride with you and give you directions—"

"No!" Stan yelped. "Not in my car. Professor, my brother can't drive a kiddy car yet, and he ain't practicin' on my pride and joy. I'll drive, you an' him sit in the back and talk nerd talk."

"You'll have to forgive my brother Stanley," Ford said.

Again the Professor chuckled. "Not at all. I quite like him already. Very well. Let us get into the back and then we'll be off. Oh—Miss Corduroy—please don't pull your axe on my men. They're edgy and I'm afraid they have firearms. I rather suspect you could do them some grievous harm, but there's really no sense in that now that we're getting close to the end, is there?"

"OK, dude," Wendy said with a sigh as she gave up the driver's seat to Stanley. "You're the doctor."

"Where to?" Stanley asked as Wendy and the others climbed into two vans.

"Oh, let's go back toward Gravity Falls," the Professor said. "Except we'll stop before we get into the valley. Just follow the vans."

"So where we goin'?"

"To a safe house, Mr. Pines," the Professor said, sounding moody. "At least as safe as any place can be until we deal with a sinister plot."

And he refused to say one word more on the subject as Stanley drove through the night.

* * *

 


	10. A Family Plot

* * *

**From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _We got to the house right around four in the morning. Mabel had slept for most of the hour-long drive, her head on my shoulder, drooling a little. Wendy sat next to me and held my hand. She was mad—they'd taken her axe. But holding her hand was nice._

_At least this time they didn't put us in one of those blacked-out vans and we could see where we were going._

_Anyway, when I first caught sight of the place, I didn't think it looked like much—a one-story ranch house, kind of little, on an overgrown farm kind of place. But like the depot compound, there was more to it than you could see. We went downhill on a quarter-mile long driveway and around to the back, where there was a barn, and the van and cars parked in that._

_When we got out, I could see that the little ranch house was just the top of a three-story house—the hill fell away sharply on both sides, and there were two layers of, what do they call it, daylight basements?_

_Anyway, we went in through the back and then upstairs. The second floor was nothing but bedrooms, small and each pair of them shared a bathroom. They put me and Mabel in one pair, Wendy across the hall from me, sharing her bath with Abuelita, then Stan and Ford in the next pair down from Wendy, and I guess Soos and Melody were next to Mabel._

_I stripped down to my underwear and fell asleep at once. A tap on the door woke me a few minutes later—but it was really nine in the morning, with sunlight streaming in. "Come in," I croaked. My throat was really dry._

_The door opened, and—Pacifica came running in! She didn't look quite right—she had her hair pulled back in a ponytail, and she was wearing a hot pink turtleneck and jeans and was barefoot. No makeup, either._

_She jumped right onto my bed! "I'm so glad to see somebody from home!" she said, hugging me tight._

_"Uh—Pacifica, I'm glad to see you, too, but—I'm not even dressed!"_

_She pushed up and grinned mischievously. "Oh, really!" She grabbed the corner of the blanket, and I clutched it as she giggled. "I was just teasing, silly. They're doing your laundry for you. You've got fresh clothes over there on the dresser. Get up and shower and change. We're all supposed to meet in an hour, and you'll need breakfast." She leaned down and kissed me on the nose. "Bye for now!"_

_After she left, I got up, still holding onto the blanket, which I wrapped around myself, and checked the door. It didn't have a lock. That figured. I tapped on the bathroom door, but no one was in it, so I picked up the brand-new underwear, pants, and red turtleneck from the dresser and carried it all into the bathroom._

_While I was showering, I heard the bathroom door open. "Brobro?"_

_"Hey, I'm in here!" I said. The shower had frosted sliding doors, at least._

_"I'm declaring a potty emergency," Mabel told me. I heard her tinkle and flush, and the water got really hot for a few seconds._

_"Warn me next time!" I yelled from clouds of steam._

_"Did they give you new clothes? Ooh, I see." Mabel laughed. "You are gonna feel wo weird in these!"_

_"Well, get out and let me try them on and see how weird I feel!"_

_"OK, Broman! I'm next in the shower."_

_I heard her close the door, so I got out and dressed in the clothes they'd given me. They did feel strange—the turtleneck was soft and comfortable and all, but even so—and the pants were khaki cargo pants with lots of pockets. They even gave me new socks. They were all the right size, at least. When I was dressed, I tapped on the door and said, "Bathroom's free, Mabel."_

_"Thanks!"_

_I went back to my room and heard the shower start up. I thought about sneaking back in and flushing, but that goes against the Code of Brothers. I think._

_Anyway, I found my stuff, flashlight and pocket notebook and pens and phone, et cetera, on the bedside table and stowed them all away in the pants pockets._

_They had left me my vest, so I pulled it on and got my shoes on and then went into the hall. I heard voices from the far end and followed them and found Wendy, Soos, Melody, and Abuelita in a dining room._

_"Hey, dude!" Wendy said. She wasn't wearing her fur hat, and she was dressed, like Pacifica, in a turtleneck—hers was black—and jeans. Tight jeans._

_"Wow," I said. "You look so—really very—you—I mean—wow."_

_Wendy laughed. "You're rockin' that turtleneck, Dip. I think they had a sale somewhere."_

_Then I noticed that EVERYBODY was in a turtleneck—Soos in forest green, Melody in a subdued pink, Abuelita in a pale orange. "Dude," Soos said, "you know, I think this is to make us identifiable if we try to escape or some junk."_

_"Yeah," I said, "we'd really stand out."_

_I sat at the table, and a moment later a stern-looking woman came in with a tray and set down a plate of toast, some oat cereal and a banana, a little pitcher of milk, and a glass of orange juice. "Thanks," I said._

_She didn't answer me, but left me to my meal. I was hungry, and I dug in. "How'd they know what kind of cereal I like?" I asked._

Wendy went "Oooooo-oooo!" as she wriggled her fingers. "There are like spies everywhere, man!"

Ford and Stan came in just then—Ford in a brown turtleneck and jeans, Stan in a mulberry-colored one and jeans. Soos, Melody, and Abuelita greeted them, and Wendy said, "Lookin' good, Stan dudes!"

"Meh," Stan grumbled. "Reminds me of when we were in first grade an' Ma dressed us just alike so I'd get some of the beatin's my brother was due from the local bullies."

_They'd hardly sat down before the same woman brought their breakfasts: scrambled eggs, wheat toast, a grilled tomato for Stan and half a grapefruit and extra-thick toast for Ford, and coffee for both. They dug in as if they were famished._

_Mabel came in last of all, wearing a red turtleneck just a shade off from mine and, like Pacifica and Wendy, jeans. She walked with her arms crossed and sort of hunched over and sat in her chair slumped way down. Even Stan noticed and asked, "What's wrong, sweetheart?"_

_Mabel made a face. "I miss my sweater!"_

_Wendy leaned over and said something to her so softly I couldn't hear it, and Mabel turned red and muttered, "Yeah, that's why . . . ."_

_"It's no big deal, dude," Wendy said. "Hey, here's your breakfast."_

_The same lady who'd brought my food in served Wendy a stack of pancakes with maple syrup and two sausage links. "Turkey," the woman said, and I suppose she meant the sausages. She set down a tall glass of milk._

_Mabel cheered up and straightened up and at that moment I realized something: her—I think the polite word is "bosoms"—were growing. They were very noticeable under the turtleneck. Her heavier sweaters hid them. I remembered then back last winter when Mom came home with new underwear for Mabel, three pairs. Mabel had held one up and asked, "What are these things?"_

_"Training bras," Mom had told her._

_Mabel had gestured to her chest and said, "Mom! I don't want to teach 'em to do TRICKS!"_

_So now she was embarrassed because she felt kind of exposed, I guess. But she was sensitive, so I just took off my vest and said, "Hey, Mabel, you look kind of chilly. Wear this if you want to."_

_She gave me a big smile. "Thanks, bro o' mine!" And then she began to shovel her breakfast down as if she hadn't seen food for a month. Through a mouthful of pancakes, Mabel said, "I wonder if Pacifica's here."_

_"Oh, yeah, she is," I said without thinking. "This morning she jumped in bed with—uh."_

_"WHAT?" Wendy asked, not sounding pleased._

_"I mean she jumped ON the bed," I said. "I was just waking up and she came in—the doors don't lock—and before I knew it, uh, she kind of, you know. Jumped. On the bed. Outside the covers. I was under. Uh."_

_"I'll have to talk to her," Wendy said, crossing her arms in a way that made me feel strangely warm._

_As soon as Mabel finished, the Professor guy showed up and said, "Everyone fed? Excellent. I trust the clothing fits you all? Good, good. We're having your own clothes cleaned and pressed." His thin lips quirked us a little smile. "And the listening devices removed, of course, Mr. Pines. If you'll come with me, I'll take you to the conference room, where, I trust, at least some of your questions will be answered."_

_So we followed him upstairs, two flights, to the top floor, where we stepped into a big room . . . ._

* * *

"State of the art!" Stanford said, sounding impressed. "I trust the communications are encrypted?"

"Scrambled signal plus Secure Level 7 special coding," the Professor said.

"But it only goes to level 5!"

"As far as _you_ know, my boy," the Professor told him with a smile. "Ah, here is Miss Northwest."

"Hi," Pacifica said. She had been spinning herself in a swivel chair and stopped when they came in. "Hey, Mabel, I'm really sorry I got you involved in this. It was supposed to be my dad who saw me fall, not you. You came there too soon."

"Wait, what?" Dipper asked. "Why was—"

"Everyone sit at the conference table," the Professor said mildly. "I will explain things in their proper order. There are glasses and ice water on the table already. If anyone wants coffee or another beverage, just speak up."

"Coffee," Stan said at once. "Two sugars and a half-shot of peach brandy."

The Professor nodded. "Did you hear that?"

An artificial computer voice said, "Yes, Professor. It is on the way."

Not twenty seconds later, Agent Trigger brought in a tray with a mug of steaming coffee on it. "Thanks," Stan said, taking it from him. Trigger looked sour, said nothing, and left them. Stan sipped his drink. "I like, I like," he said with a broad grin. "Professor, you're OK in my book!"

"Thank you, Mr. Pines. Lights." The lights dimmed. "Projector." A screen rolled down against the wall at the foot of the table, and a projector built into a ceiling dome flooded it with light. "Show us Mr. Northby Kaplan Northwest."

Dipper saw a handsome young man, maybe eighteen or so. His tousled reddish-brown hair looked as if a breeze were ruffling it. The background was out of focus, but looked oddly familiar.

"Taken last spring," the Professor said, "at Magdalen College, Oxford University."

"In England," Stan said decisively.

The Professor raised his bushy gray eyebrows. "Ah—yes."

Mabel had eyes only for the subject, not the background. "Wah-wah-wowie! Pacifica, your cousin is a hunk!"

"A great big hunk of _doo-doo!_ " Pacifica shot back.

That was so unlike her that Dipper couldn't help laughing. "Pacifica!"

"Well, he is," she insisted. "He was plotting to kill us all—me, Dad, and Mom."

"Wait, what?" Wendy asked. "No way!"

"It's true," Pacifica insisted. "The Professor will tell you!"

The Professor had taken a pipe, a Sherlock-Holmes-style crooked one, from his pocket and, though he put no tobacco in it, he clenched it between his teeth and nodded mournfully. "I'm afraid Miss Northwest is correct," he said. "However, let me begin with a recapitulation of Mr. Northby Northwest's activities last spring . . . ."

* * *

_**Monday, March 23, 2013, Glen Docherty, Scotland, UK.** _

Charley Thursby, an obese young man of twenty, panted as he plodded along in the footsteps of the American exchange student. "I say, Northwest, let's walk a bit more slowly!"

"Thursby, you need to walk off some fat," Northwest called back. Though he was an American, it took a sharp ear to discern that—he was adaptable, and his English was so nearly unaccented that he might have been from Essex or from the Borough, perhaps a well-traveled scion of an educated family.

"I'll thank you to keep a civil tongue. You're my junior, you know!" Thursby snapped with some asperity.

"Then jog along, old man," Northwest returned smoothly.

He was indeed junior to Thursby—who had been at Oxford for nearly three years now. Northwest had come only the previous fall and had finished just two terms of his year of study abroad—Hilary Term had ended the previous Saturday. And it was true that most of the students and some of the professors openly disdained "Yanks."

Yet everyone, including them, knew that the boy who was saturnine of demeanor and yet oddly almost always smiled was intellectually very sharp. In fact, all his professors commented on it.

"I've half a mind to chuck this whole hiking lark and go back home," Thursby panted.

"Fine with me," Northwest said. "You invited yourself, remember. Aha. I believe that's our goal."

"What, the pile of rocks on top of the hill?"

"The ruins of Castle Claymorgh," corrected Northwest. "Given by James VI to Sir Drummond MacGregor by royal patent in 1595. MacGregor was the descendant of a knight named Griagor who served with the Knights Templar in the Crusades. Hence my interest."

"You're not taking a bloody degree in history!"

"We'll see."

The climb was steep and, despite the nippy air of Scotland in March, warm. They arrived at the ruins about eleven-thirty in the morning. Thursby looked around disdainfully. "Not in good repair," he said.

"It's a fixer-upper," agreed Northwest, taking a folded paper—no, actually, a parchment—from an inner pocket and opening it. He found something, marked his place with his thumb, and with his free hand pulled out a compass. "Now let's see." He turned slowly until the needle locked on N. "Now, this should be the main courtyard. The castle gate would be just behind me. So ahead of us we should find a stairway leading down."

"Couldn't bloody well lead anywhere else, could it?" demanded Thursby. "I mean, there's hardly any walls left!"

"Shepherds probably plundered the stones to build huts," Northwest murmured as he picked his way forward, stepping around and over rubble. "Ah. This is the foundation of the tower. Help me clear away some of these stones."

"Oh, really, Northwest—"

"Come on, Thursby. If we find what I'm looking for, I promise I will treat you to the biggest duck dinner you could ever imagine."

"Well—I am peckish."

"You're always peckish. Help me here. There shouldn't be too much to do."

They levered and rolled and dragged stones for the better part of an hour. Little by little they revealed a dark, arched opening—very low, so they'd have to lie down to slip under the arch—and below that they could see eroded stone steps, cluttered with smaller bits of rubble.

Northwest had already removed his backpack and jacket. He opened the pack and found a flashlight and a hand-pickax. "All right," he said. "I'll go down. You're a bit large for this passageway, and I don't imagine you'd want to risk getting stuck."

"I shall rest," Thursby grumbled, settling onto a rock.

Northwest lay on his back and, feet first, wormed his way through the small doorway and onto the steps. The flashlight showed him that the vaulted roof held. He got to his feet and, stooping, walked downward.

The old wooden doors had crumbled away completely. He found himself in a maze of store rooms, none very large, and to make sure he could find his way back, he chipped blazes into the stones at eye level at every new door opening. He counted under his breath. When he reached the thirteenth room, he knelt and felt among the fallen stones and dust. "Should be here," he grunted. Then he smiled as his hand closed on a corroded iron ring ten inches in diameter.

He spent minutes clearing the edges of the trap door, and more working the pickax head into the crevice and prying. With a crackle of falling dust, the stone began to shift, and then he stood, seized the ring, took a deep breath, and heaved.

It was almost too heavy—almost. But he got the trap slightly ajar, and then using the pickax as a lever, he pried it further until it fell through the opening and boomed onto a stone floor below. Northwest swung himself down—there had been a ladder, once, but it was long gone. No matter. The low chamber was only about five feet high, and standing in it, Northwest saw that his chin was level with the floor above. He could easily hoist himself up again.

Now . . . the treasure that old Sir Drummond had inherited from his Templar ancestor, who had stolen it in the Holy Land, should be hidden behind a stone in the back wall. Bending almost double, holding his flashlight, Northwest counted stones. Five, six, seven stones down. Three, four, five from the left. Yes, that one was smaller than most of the stones. He pried it out and shone his light into the opening.

It lay there waiting, a gemstone that flashed amber in the beam of his flashlight. The Stone of Summoning.

He closed his hand on it and smiled at the smooth, warm feel. The old manuscript had read, _"Yt ys sayde yt ye Ston of Sumoning doth feel to the touche wondrous warme even if yt hath layn in snow or ice."_

The same ancient Highland wizard who had penned that had also explained that without it, the Ring of Solomon had only half its power.

And since his raid on the Museum of Antiquities the previous summer, Northwest possessed the Ring of Solomon—or at least the ring that was reputed to have been Solomon's. Now he could fully activate it.

If the long-dead wizard who had written the screed had been right, that is.

Northwest wedged the flashlight into the opening he had made. He took the Ring of Solomon from the thong around his neck and put it on the ring finger of his left hand. "Now," he said. He clenched the Stone in his right hand.

And in the flashlight beam, his hands and arms, even his clothing, became transparent and then disappeared. "It works," he said.

Now, if he transferred the stone to his left hand, the same hand that wore the Ring—but that experiment could wait. Northwest retrieved the light and turned it off. Somehow, in the invisible state, he could see, though the colors were—weird. Grays were muddy red. The light-brown earth looked murky green.

He followed the blazed stones back to the steps, climbed up them, and crawled through, coming out beneath a cloudy sky that looked red, streaked with yellow, and gazed down a hillside on which the grass grew purple. Thursby, looking like a figure on a color TV set that was fast dying, still sat on the stone, disconsolately munching on a Galaxy Ripple bar, a candy bar so sweet that it induced instant diabetes in unwary Americans.

Walking carefully, Northwest moved to stand within a couple of feet of the Brit. With his left hand, the ringed hand, he raised the pickax. It would be so easy . . . .

But no. He lowered the tool and slipped the stone back into his pocket. "Nothing there," he said.

To his delight, Thursby jumped a mile, coughing and spraying spittle dyed brown with chocolate (the candy bar had looked fluorescent green while Northwest was invisible). "Where'd you come from?" he demanded, his face pale.

"From down there," Northwest said with a shrug. "You were too busy gorging to notice, I suppose. Let's go."

He got his jacket and pack on again, and they started down the hill.

They started back to the lodge where they were staying—an eight-mile hike, three hours, and Thursby was complaining the sun would be down before they got back to their lodgings—and casually Northwest shifted the stone from his pocket into his left hand. It seemed to pulse, and he began to concentrate. The first time was supposedly the hardest.

They passed the Loch a' Chroisg on their left, a windswept lake between low hills brown with dead heather. Ducks, Northwest thought. Ducks, ducks, ducks.

His heart lifted as he glanced up at the cloudy sky, now a proper gray again. They came flying in, skeins of six and a dozen, white bodies with black-striped wings, green iridescent heads, long orange beaks. They quacked as they settled onto the water, scores of them, hundreds of them. "Goosanders," Thursby said, sounding short of breath. "They eat salmon. Nuisance birds. Fishermen hate them."

"Hm," Northwest said. "Wonderful plumage. Let's get closer. I'd like to take a picture."

"You Yanks," grumbled Thursby. "I suppose you want to feed the widdle fluffy duckums."

"Perhaps, perhaps. I might offer them a bite. You never can tell," Northwest murmured.

But with his hand clenched tight on the stone, he was thinking, _Attack! Attack! Attack!_

* * *

**_From the Cookham Gazette, 27 March, 2013:_ **

**Strange Death in Scots Highlands**

In a bizarre occurrence, the Hon. Charles Vielle Thursby died Monday last whilst on a hiking holiday in Scotland.

Thursby was savaged by an innumerable flock of ducks. Such an attack has never before been recorded.

At least 1500 Goosanders, which have powerful sawtoothed bills and considerable strength in their bites, attacked the young man. He evidently attempted to flee from them onto the A832 near Loch a' Chroisg, but fell and was pecked and bitten to the point of death. A lorry driver encountered the immense flock of ducks, which flew away as he stopped.

Life was extinct in Thursby when the lorry driver reached him. A friend of Thursby's testified before a coroner that the two of them had been on a hike but were returning to their hostel. Thursby had noticed the flock of ducks and had lagged behind to take photographs. The friend had continued to the lodge and was unaware of Thursby's plight until, an hour after the body was found, he was told of the tragedy.

Biologists have no explanation for this unusual duck behaviour.

The Hon. Charles Vielle Thursby was a student at Magdalen College and the son of . . . .

* * *

By the time the news article appeared, Northby Northwest was already in the air on a flight back to the States. He had what he had come for.

And he nursed a grudge against his grandfather, who had raised him and who, as it turned out, really had very little money.

Fortunately, there was a rich cousin somewhere . . . some podunk little town in, where was it?

Oh, yes.

_Oregon._

* * *

 


	11. To Catch a Thief

* * *

 

 _ **A Flashback to Friday, July 26, 2013:**_ "This is Northby, sir. Your cousin, Northby Northwest, the late Baring and Brenda's son," he said into the phone. _Stupid old device._ His grandfather never took to modern electronics. This instrument had to plug into the wall by means of a cord, and the receiver weighed about a pound! And you had to dial it with an actual circular _dial_ punctured by ten holes! _Primitive!_

"Yes, sir," he said to Preston Northwest away out there in Oregon. Northby sat at his grandfather's ornate desk in his elaborately baroque (but, since the books had been bought just for ornamentation, completely useless) library. He could gaze out the arched window and see, down a steep grassy hill, the Hudson River gliding past, heading south toward Manhattan. A few miles north of him was West Point, where stupid old Grandfather Benjamin had once proposed he be educated. As if.

"Yes, well, that's what I'm calling about," Northby said smoothly when Preston allowed him to get a word in. "My grandfather Benjamin passed away suddenly last week. No, it was very unexpected. No, he wasn't sick. It was an accident involving a bear. On his estate."

 _Ha! Estate. That was a joke_. After living far too long and spending far too much of his savings, old Grandpop had been forced to sell off more than a hundred acres of what had been a 112-acre expanse. Now practically next door to the mansion, a construction crew was putting up a housing development.

And old Benjamin Northwest's lawyers had already told Northby that after everything was settled, he would come out of it with only a hundred thousand. Maybe three hundred more if he could sell the ridiculous old house and the remaining twelve acres for that much, though the market was weak. And his two thousand a month from the trust fund that his father had set up for him would evaporate when he turned twenty-one, in a little more than two and a half years.

Chicken feed. Northby wanted to live in a style to which he would become accustomed, and that meant he needed _serious_ money. He had his eye on millions.

He said into the phone, "We don't understand it either, sir. He always took a stroll early every morning along the bluff overlooking the river. He must have come upon the bear and startled it. It attacked, and poor Grandfather tried to run but fell to his death. A jogger witnessed the whole thing and reported it to 911 on his mobile phone, but of course it was too late. The bear? Odd thing, it fled back into the brush. They could find no trace of it. When they recovered Grandfather's body, they came to the house to tell me. I was just getting out of bed, and they broke the tragic news to me."

 _Just getting out of bed._ That had been his excuse. The jogger had not been part of the plan at all, and he'd had to hustle to hide himself and transform back into his human shape before fleeing to the house.

The trouble was that the jogger had startled him, and as a bear he'd had trouble thinking through the repercussions of transforming back a few hundred yards from the house. True, he was human again. However, he was also naked.

That meant darting from bush to bush—he didn't dare transform twice in one day, that was supposed to be incredibly dangerous. Finally, Northby had reached the back of the house, and risking discovery, he'd run stark naked across the yard to his room, where he'd left a window open, and he grabbed a robe inside, but he'd barely wrapped himself in it before the doorbell rang.

He'd barely had time to shove his muddy feet into slippers before going to answer the insistent ringing.

To Preston Northwest, he said, "Thank you sir, but no. Perhaps a discreet donation to his memory might be in order. Oh, I'd say the Wexham Society, sir. It's a small educational foundation dedicated to research." _Into unholy subjects, of course,_ he added mentally, with a wicked grin. "I could send you the address."

Then, through clenched teeth, but maintaining a smooth tone, he flat-out lied: "No, he left me well off. Well, I'm rather at loose ends as to what to do, sir. I thought I might travel out to Oregon to visit your family, in fact. I have no close ties here any longer. My mother and father died when I was twelve, I have no siblings, and Grandfather was my last living close relative. Well, thank you very much, sir. I was thinking perhaps next week. A renovated farmhouse sounds delightful. Yes, I can't wait to meet my young cousin Pacifica. Thank you, sir, and I'll be in touch."

He hung up the phone, leaned back in his grandfather's creaking chair, and picked up a sheaf of printouts. His cousins out west were truly his only remaining relatives. Well, they were if you didn't count the ones in Massachusetts and Connecticut, but they were all—ugh— _middle-class_ , master carpenters and office workers and such, so you really shouldn't count them. According to the information he'd dug up, Preston Northwest was worth perhaps eight million dollars, if you counted his business, which appeared to be flourishing again after a prolonged downslide.

Too bad he hadn't been able to tap into that last year, when the fortune had been double or triple that, at least—but anyhow, the business was looking healthier than it had in a few years.

Better, as far as he could discover, Preston Northwest had not—yet—made out a will. If his dear daughter died suddenly in a bizarre accident, however, it might be easy to persuade him to change that . . . and if he, Northby, settled in and offered staunch comfort and support to the grieving couple—he grinned. Of course, he would become an heir.

Only if Preston died without making a will first, Priscilla would inherit it all, under Oregon law. And if Preston died tragically, then perhaps Priscilla would respond to the romantic comfort of a much younger man. After all, she wasn't really related to him . . . and if he married her, it wouldn't last long. Because she wouldn't, either.

If such a development did not appear practicable, the tragic accident could easily kill both of them. And he would be on the spot as the last living relative, so—it all worked out.

He stretched. Controlling the movement of animals was one thing. It took concentration and left him feeling weak and disoriented for a day or two. Invisibility was more troublesome—headaches and dizziness for three days afterward. Entering the mind of an animal, while his own body fell into a coma-like trance, was still worse and resulted in migraines for a week.

But actual _transformation_ , shapeshifting into the form of an animal, that was hardest of all, and its after-effects the worst. Even now, after more than a week, he'd still catch his fingernails trying to elongate into bear claws. And the dreams, the dreams, the bad, bad dreams of blood and death and the taste of human flesh—

No matter. This next escapade would settle him, and he wouldn't have to use the Ring and the Stone ever again.

Unless, of course, some fool got in his way.

* * *

The group in the conference room looked appalled as the Professor finished his summary of Northby Northwest's activities and suspected plans.

For a meditative moment, the Professor gently tapped on his teeth with the mouthpiece of his pipe. "In short," he told the group, "We feel certain that Northby Northwest was responsible for the murder of his friend Charles Thursby in England and for the death of his own grandfather in upper New York State. He killed them both by means of the Seal of Solomon and the Stone of Summoning."

Ford said, "You seem to take the supernatural in stride."

With a shrug, the Professor said, "Well, Dr. Pines, when you've seen as much as I have seen, it becomes easier to do so. We have been on the trail of Mr. Northwest ever since the theft year before last of the Ring of Solomon from the Museum of Antiquities. We suspected he had taken it, but had no proof. At first we thought we could wait him out until he attempted to do something with it, to sell it I mean, since weren't unduly concerned—to use the ring for more than simple aggregating of large numbers of animals or birds, one needs the Stone of Summoning. We had no idea that artifact still existed or where it might be—but then our agents in England, assigned to follow Northwest, discovered the nature of his researches."

"And ya bugged his phone, didn't ya?" Stan asked.

The Professor's old face creased in a rather evil smile. "As a matter of course, Mr. Pines. That's how we learned that he was abruptly dropping out of Oxford and returning to the United States. And how we knew he was systematically checking into the net worth first of his grandfather and then of Mr. Preston Northwest. When he began to look into Miss Pacifica's habits, friends, and routines, we realized she was very probably the next victim on his list."

"Ew," Pacifica said, wrinkling her nose. "That's, like, _insulting!_ "

"We had already noted the death of Mr. Thursby as highly indicative of the Seal's power. We realized the danger to the Northwest family in Gravity Falls and moved to protect them. Agent Powers consulted Mrs. Northwest in the Mall and gave her persuasive proofs that this cousin was not to be trusted. In order to shield her daughter, Mrs. Northwest cooperated with our ruse. We arranged for Miss Northwest to enter protective custody and set up a scenario in which it would appear that she had, for reasons unknown, leaped or fallen to her death."

Everyone looked at Pacifica. She sighed in an annoyed way. "Okay, so, like, they had this life-sized _mannequin_ of me? And they dressed it to look just like me. I was supposed to be on the tower, and the EMT's would call my father, and he would drive there in time to see me fall—but I was supposed to hide on the opposite side before I tossed it over, and the EMT's would crowd around the mannequin and take it away before Dad got a look at it. But then Mabel showed up!"

"I'm sorry, Pacifica," Mabel said. "I just thought you were in trouble, 'cause I didn't know what was going on!"

Pacifica rolled her eyes. "So, _anyway_ , I like panicked and threw the mannequin over or whatever, and then climbed up the ladder and lowered myself into the tank, but I slipped and had to swim over to the ladder in my _clothes_ and hang on there until I heard the sirens. The EMT's _finally_ showed up, and they gave me a jumpsuit and I came down disguised."

"Just as my nephew Dipper deduced," Ford said, sounding proud.

"From that moment on, we were improvising to buy time," the Professor went on. "We thought this sudden, ah, 'accident' would jolt young Northby. We knew he would want time to pass before he moved against Preston Northwest—otherwise he would attract unwanted attention. Now we are faced with how to trap him while he has both the ring and the stone on his person—and how to prevent him from using them against our men."

Surprisingly, Wendy spoke up: "Hey, wouldn't it be, like, an incredible shock to him if today Pacifica turned up alive? That oughta make him think twice about offing the other Northwests."

The Professor nodded. "Superficially, yes, that sounds like a possibility. However, we don't want to risk Miss Northwest's life. This young man is ruthless, without conscience."

Mabel said, "What if somebody _looked_ like Pacifica? If she could fool him at a distance, you guys could be ready with a cage or something that she could hide in if he summoned birds or animals, right?"

"That is a thought," the Professor said.

 _"Ta-da!_ " Mabel said. "Here I am! Pacifica and I are about the same height. Just get me clothes like hers and a blonde wig—"

"Hold on, hold on!" Ford said, just as Stan said, "Wait a minute!" and Dipper yelled, "No!"

Pacifica looked intrigued, though. "You know, we _could_ dye your hair blonde—and Dipper's too, so he'd match—"

"No," Dipper said flatly.

"It might work," the Professor murmured. "I believe he might lose control if he thought he'd been outsmarted. And we could do everything in our power to assure Miss Pines of a place of safe retreat."

There was a fair amount of grumbling and dissension, but the group slowly came to agree with Mabel's idea. Still, both great-uncles held out for a long time. Finally, Stan muttered, "Only if we could lure this mook to a spot where Mabel would be most secure. And I think I know just the place. Poindexter, you got any woo-woo tech that might protect our side?"

Ford looked thoughtful. "I think I just might be able to work something up. And I believe my laboratory is in the same place you're thinking of. One other thing." He glanced at the Professor. "For various reasons, my skills and knowledge have become rather rusty over the past few years. I'll need some help. Professor, do you recall a student named Fiddleford McGucket?"

"Played the banjo as I recall," murmured the Professor. "A gifted young man with robotics and electronics. If he would be an asset, consult him by all means."

For a few moments there was silence. Stan broke it. "Well, somebody's gotta say it," he announced. "It's an obligatory trope, ya know."

Ford blinked. "Stanley! You amaze me."

"So I'll say it," Stan continued. "It's a crazy plan—but it just might work!"

* * *

As they drove in the van toward the Shack—Soos and his family, Mabel, Wendy, and Dipper, that is, since Stan and Ford had peeled off in the El Diablo to collect McGucket—Wendy kept smiling at Dipper. Not until they'd reached the Shack and stepped out of the van, though, did he get a chance to ask her why.

"Let's walk out to the bonfire clearing," Wendy said. They didn't exercise, but just strolled. When they reached it, Wendy glanced back. The agents in charge of the van, along with Mabel and their friends, had all gone inside. Then Wendy said, "Dip, man, I gotta say you surprise me sometimes. You givin' your vest to Mabel back there—that was sensitive of you, dude."

Dipper exhaled. He'd been worried it would be a lecture about Pacifica and her—frankly annoying—crush. "Aw," he said, "she's really embarrassed about, you know . . . developing. Mom bought her training bras, but she hardly ever wears them because her sweaters cover everything up. These turtlenecks are thin." He grinned self-consciously and rubbed the back of his neck. "But by the way, if it's not offensive, I just gotta say you look great in yours."

"Yeah?" Wendy grinned. "I know where Mabel's comin' from though. I feel out of place. I'd hate to climb a tree in this thing! You, though—promise me when you get to college you won't wear turtlenecks, OK?"

"I look that dorky, huh?" he asked as they started to walk to the Shack, holding hands.

"Nope," Wendy said casually. "It's just that you'd have the girls climbin' all over you. You actually look kinda hot!"

They walked in through the gift shop, where Mabel was feeding Waddles. Ordinarily the pig stayed outside for this ritual these days, since he had grown so much and was a sloppy eater, but Dipper gathered that he had special dispensation after having been separated from Mabel overnight.

Mabel looked up from scratching the pig's ears. "Man," she said, "it must be _seriously_ hot outside. Dip, I think you got sunburned!"

"Maybe," Dipper said. Wendy nudged him, and he grinned self-consciously. "Yeah, my face feels a little hot!"

In the early afternoon the Stans and McGucket appeared, the latter with his box of tricks. "He may have magic," McGucket said with a hint of his old-timey hillbilly accent, "but on our side we got science! By cracky!" And he did a little hamboning to top off his remark.

And so as the afternoon came on, they began to work on their trap.

* * *

 


	12. Northby Northwest

* * *

 

Pacifica shifted nervously from foot to foot. The Professor stood beside her, not far from the Mystery Shack. "You don't have to do this, you know," he said in a kind voice.

"No, really, I want to," Pacifica said. "But—I mean, Mabel looks a _lot_ more stylish than usual, and I like her as a blonde, but why does she even have to do this? I could be the decoy _myself._ "

"Yeah," Mabel said, "but if he caught you, it would be curtains! _Dom-dom-DOMMM!_ If he catches me, I can whip off the wig and he'll see his mistake and let me go. Probably. And if that doesn't work, you can show yourself, and we'll really confuse him!"

"OK, OK," Pacifica said. "But we don't know what he's gonna _do._ What if he shows up here with, like, a herd of buffalo, or a pride of mountain lions, or something?"

"Pride?" Mabel asked, giggling. "Where'd you get that?"

"In school! That's what you _call_ a bunch of lions," Pacifica said. "I'm just blonde, Mabel. I'm not _dumb!"_ She sighed. "You know what? Just give me the phone."

The Professor handed her the cell phone. "His caller ID will show this is yours. However, my men have disabled the GPS function, so he can't learn exactly where you're calling from—he'll have a general idea, perhaps, but he can't pinpoint you. Just a moment, my dear young lady." He turned and called to Soos, "Mr. Ramirez, do you have somewhere to shelter?"

"Oh, yeah, Professor dude," Soos called back as he helped his Abuelita into the Jeep that had replaced his old pickup. "Melody has relatives over in Portland, and they said it was cool if we stayed with them for a day or two. They've been wantin' us to visit anyways."

"Don't say any more, not even to me," the Professor cautioned. "And don't tell anyone else where you're heading. Someone will call you when it's safe to return."

"Thanks, dawg," Soos said, coming over. "Man, I gotta tell you, I wasn't too happy when your guys came and made us go with them. But you guys treated us all right. I want you to know I appreciate that, dude." He held out his hand.

The Professor smiled as he shook it. "I'm happy to hear you say that. Time to go now. Drive carefully."

"Have to," Soos said cheerfully. "Baby on board, dawg!" He went back and climbed in and a moment later the Jeep rumbled away.

"Now," the Professor said, turning back to the girls. "Here is your cousin's number. If he doesn't answer by the fourth ring, just hang up. Ready?" Pacifica nodded, and he recited the number.

Pacifica punched it in and then stood tapping her foot, glaring at the ground. One ring. Two. Three. And then—

"Who is this?" It was a guy's voice, and it sounded nice—well, _hot,_ even—but though he spoke softly, suspicion edged his words.

"This is your cousin Pacifica," she said. "Cousin Northby, I want to thank you for that _reception_ committee. Though it was sort of for the birds, wasn't it?"

A pause, and when he spoke again, it was so soft it was hardly more than a whisper: "You've been reported as dead."

"Oh, really? Well, _somebody_ made a big mistake, didn't they? Oh, wait, I bet it was _you_. What are your plans, Northby? I mean other than murdering me!"

"No, you don't understand. It doesn't have to come to that. I don't want to hurt you in any way." _Oh, man, he could make his voice purr like a happy tiger._ "Let me suggest something, cousin. I'm from the New England Northwests. You're from the Oregon branch. The Northwests have always been clannish, and we always stand together. Now you and I, we could reach some kind of combination that would benefit us both."

Pacifica laughed. "What are you doing, _proposing?_ _Puh-lease!_ We're _cousins!_ And I'm only fourteen!"

"Fourth cousins," Northby said quickly. "That's not illegal. And in New Hampshire, girls can get married as early as thirteen, with parents' consent. I think you could get your parents' consent, don't you?"

"I think you're _sick,"_ Pacifica said sweetly. "Anyway, I wouldn't think of marrying somebody I've never even _met_. But to tell you the truth, you do sound kinda . . . hunky. Tell you what, come meet me—alone—and let's talk this over in person."

"Fine. Where are you?"

"No tricks?"

"No, of course not."

_Yeah, right_ , she thought. But she said, "OK, so I'm at this place called the Mystery Shack? It's temporarily closed right now, so nobody's here to interrupt us. It's 618 Gopher Road. Remember, no tricks, and come alone."

"I—"

Pacifica heaved an exaggerated sigh. "You're _boring_ me." And she cut him off and then switched off her phone. She looked at the Professor. "Was that OK?"

"It should do."

Mabel said, "I didn't know you were already fourteen!"

"Yeah, in early June. You guys weren't here yet."

"You've gotta tell me your birthday so next year I can make you a card!"

Pacifica blinked at her, then smiled shyly. "I—don't get many birthday cards."

"Wait'll next year!"

Meanwhile, the Professor was on the phone himself, speaking to—

* * *

Ford said, "We have prepared the material, Professor. We'll be back at the Shack in five minutes. Yes, sir."

Dipper was rubbing some scratches. "You should've told him that unicorns are real creeps," he muttered. "Letting me get right up with the scissors, then bumping me into a bush! Accident, my foot! And Grunkle Stan sheltered those jerks in the Shack last year!"

"Well, at least they finally gave us what we need," Ford said. "Come on, let's get a move on. And while we walk, I'd better call—"

* * *

"Yah?" Stan said. "I'm kinda busy, Ford, whatcha want? Yeah, yeah, Fiddleford's got it rigged up. I tell ya straight, I'm not so crazy about doin' this without, like, a pig at stake or somethin'. Nah, no worries, I'll have a control and Fiddleford will drive himself back. Should take us ten, fifteen minutes, tops."

* * *

The cage had been set up in a clump of brush about thirty feet shy of the Bottomless Pit. The brush hadn't actually grown there—the government guys had planted it to conceal a human-sized steel cage. At the moment the door stood ajar—but if Mabel needed to dive into the cage, all she had to do was slam the door, and it would lock.

The refuge had been made of carbon-forged steel, with a mesh too small for any large creature to come through—and even a buffalo would have trouble overturning it, since the government men had anchored it deep in the earth.

Mabel stood only a few feet from the concealed entrance, practicing holding her nose in the air and flipping her blonde wig. She was really pleased with the whole effect—she wore one of Pacifica's trademark outfits, a lavender shift dress under a purple jacket, a silver belt slung low on her hips, black leggings, fur-topped boots, and big silver hoop earrings. And lots of makeup. _Lots_ of it.

When she'd first put on the getup, she and Pacifica had stood in front of a mirror. "You clean up nicely," Pacifica had told her with a smile.

"Thank you!" Mabel had said. "And I already got the hang of behaving like you from when we switched bodies. Watch this!" She lifted her chin, snapped her fingers, and in her haughtiest Valley-girl tone ordered, "Oh, Wellington! Fetch me a single perfect grape! And it _better_ not have any dark spots on it! And no seeds! Remember! No! Seeds!"

"I do _not_ sound like that!" Pacifica huffed.

Mabel giggled and lightly punched her arm. "Yeah, you do!"

Pacifica's frown slowly turned into a sheepish smile. "Well—I'm trying not to these days, all right?"

"You're getting better and better at being nice," Mabel assured her, and Pacifica turned away because something got in her eye.

Now, though, standing at her post near the cage, Mabel was not only exited, but a little bit worried. Northby Northwest had those magical thingums, after all—the stone and the ring. Grunkle Ford had told them all that together the objects had strange powers—summoning and controlling animals and birds, for example, and turning the wearer of the ring invisible, and maybe other magic as well. He thought he could neutralize a lot of those powers through technology or counter-magic, but—

_But what if they failed?_

Well, she had the cage to rely on. And beneath the clothes she wore in imitation of Pacifica's outfit, Mabel had concealed her secret weapon.

Only a few minutes had passed since Pacifica's call. Even if he drove straight to the Shack, Northby couldn't be there for another, what, fifteen, twenty minutes? So there was nothing to do but wait.

"I _hate_ waiting," Mabel muttered. She scanned the surroundings, but no birds flew in the sky—though she heard the drumming of one of the Gravity Falls woodpeckers off in the distance—and the only animal she could see was Waddles, dozing in the sun on the back porch of the Shack.

_No threats, she thought. I'm safe. I'm absolutely safe._

_Probably._

* * *

Northby was anxious to get away, but Preston's questions delayed him for half an hour. "I can't understand why you need to go now," he said. "At any time we may get the call that Pacifica's body can be released. We'll have to drive all the way to Morris to claim it. I—I can't handle that on my own, and I wouldn't subject Priscilla to—to . . . . I need you, Northby."

"Sir," Northby said, giving the older man his sincerest fake smile, "believe me, I understand. This is something that won't take me very long, but I do have to take care of it. I won't burden you with any details, but it isn't serious. I'll be back inside of an hour. If you get the call, just tell them we'll leave as soon as possible."

Preston, whose eyes wore deep bags underneath, whose shoulders sagged, nodded. "Yes, I—Northby, I haven't said it, but—but thank you for being here. I can't believe that Pacifica would really have—have done away with herself. There's something behind all this, something—sinister."

"I think that, too, sir," Northby said. "And I promise you, we'll get to the bottom of it. Let me go now, and I'll be back shortly."

Preston only nodded, and Northby finally got away. The GPS in Preston's car—Northby was borrowing it, of course—recognized the address. The Mystery Shack, huh? Weird place for a meet. And it was nearly half an hour away from the farm, but—well, so what? It was early afternoon. It wasn't as if he were running out of time. Not him.

He donned dark driving glasses and grinned. No, he wasn't running out of time. Cousin Pacifica, though—

_That was a different story._

* * *

Ford handed one necklace to Pacifica, one to Mabel. "Wear these," he instructed the girls. "They're strung on unicorn hair."

"Really?" Pacifica asked. "I didn't _like_ the unicorns I met during never-mind-about-all-that. They were _snooty!"_

"Yeah, but the hair protects you against magic," Mabel said, slipping the necklace of small purple beads on.

"Well," Pacifica said reluctantly, "all right, but just because they look _fabulous_ with my jacket—Dipper, will you close the clasp for me, please?"

But Mabel said, "I got it!"

Probably just as well, because just then Wendy came striding down the driveway. "Hid my car down at the crossroads," she said. "Hope that's OK."

"It's fine," the Professor told her. "But as I explained, you really don't have to be here."

"Oh, I'm gonna be here," Wendy said with a fierce grin. "That guy messed with my friends."

"Stay hidden and out of danger, then," the Professor warned.

"Believe me, sir," Dipper said, "you don't have to worry. Wendy can take care of herself."

The Professor's phone beeped softly, and he looked at the text. "He's only about five minutes away. Places, everyone! And remember, the word to call out is 'longbow!' If the snipers hear that, they'll be ready. Shout 'longbow' and throw yourselves onto the ground. We must take no unnecessary chances."

Mabel stood in her spot. Pacifica and the Professor walked to the deserted-looking Shack. Ford said, "We'll hide in the woods," and he, Dipper, and Wendy walked toward the fringe of the forest. "Good luck, Mabel!"

"Thanks, Grunkle Ford!"

Wendy said quietly to Dipper, "You scared, dude?"

"Yeah," he confessed. "For Mabel."

She put her arm around his shoulders. "I can understand that. We won't let anything happen to her, 'kay?"

"Thanks, Wendy," Dipper said.

"For what, dude? It's what I want to do, 'cause it's you and Mabel."

"Not for that," Dipper said. "For giving me a little bit of your courage."

Wendy chuckled. "Keep it, Dip. From me to you. Don't worry."

"I'm not worried," Dipper said. "Northby Northwest doesn't know what he's walking into. We're gonna kick his butt."

"I like that confidence," Wendy told him, punching his shoulder.

Ford stopped behind a stand of young trees and said, "All right, this is where we hide. Here. You may want to put these on." He handed both Dipper and Wendy a pair of lightly tinted spectacles in unusually heavy black frames, and he put a clip-on version of them over his own glasses.

Wendy tried them on. "Cool shades, but won't they, like, get in the way?"

"I think I know what these do," Dipper said. "Wendy, look at my hand."

She did. "Dude! You're glowin' orange!"

"Heat-sensitive technology," Ford said. "If Northwest tries invisibility, we'll be ready. He can't hide his infrared signature."

"Cool," Wendy said. "Dipper! You're starin' at me, dude!"

Dipper blushed. He couldn't help it.

Through the lenses, Wendy looked as if she were made of fire. She looked _amazing_. She looked like a goddess come to earth.

"Uh—sorry, just getting used to these glasses," he said. "Are we all ready?"

Ford grunted. "Stanley hasn't checked in yet, or Fiddleford. But they'll be here when we need them."

"Hope so," Wendy said. "Well, guys, if somethin' goes wrong—it's been great knowin' you!"

"See you on the other side," Dipper said, reaching out to squeeze her hand.

And Ford said, "Shh. That must be him now."

* * *

 


	13. Psycho!

* * *

 

Northby had spent a little time as a wolf, and he found—as with the hawk he had been, as with the bear and the trout and the harmless-seeming squirrel—that some of the animal lingered within him. He was still a mile from the address when some wolf-sense told him to pull the car over and go the rest of the way on foot.

He got out, put his head back, and took a deep sniff. Faint scents of many distant people tinged the air. He looked around and overhead. Nothing—except an extremely high bird, probably a hawk or eagle, circling against the clear blue. He closed his hand, feeling the hard weight of the ring, and reached out with his mind, but the bird was too far away for him to get any sense of it. No matter. He could call all the birds of the forest at need.

He found a few, woodpeckers and thrushes, and briefly saw the world through their eyes. The area around the Shack looked deserted, except for a blonde girl standing with arms crossed in front of some bushes.

"Cousin," he whispered, grinning. Had to be. Had to be—that style of clothing, blonde hair, everything in her posture screaming her impatience. He'd decided to talk to her. A child bride—that could be managed, maybe, and no doubt a relieved Preston Northwest would welcome him into the family. The tragic deaths of wife and in-laws could be managed later, after everyone had forgotten the daughter's odd disappearance.

Except he couldn't forget it. It might be better, simpler, just to find her body, after it had been mauled by forest creatures. And who was the girl who had fallen—or leaped—from the water tower? Well, two dead wouldn't bother him any more than one—

But those smells, of people, people, people, too close. Northby reached into his pocket and retrieved a leather pouch on a thong. He looped that around his neck, then hesitated. If he transformed into a bird, or a bear with a thick neck—better to use the alternate. He moved the loop, tightened it, and then whispered the words that began the spell. He felt the tingle and became invisible.

He didn't like invisibility so much. For one thing, though he could not be seen by human eyes, he found the world around him weird in its shifted, distorted colors, and dimmed to something less than twilight, to the gloom that precedes nightfall. Even if it were full noon, he walked in an unfamiliar dusk—so much easier if he also transformed, say to a wolf, but he wanted to save transformation in case of unexpected circumstances.

So, walking as unseen as the wind, he continued down the road, found the driveway, and turned toward the Mystery Shack, every human sense—and some not so human—alert . . . .

* * *

"Got something," Ford whispered.

"I see it," Dipper said. "Wendy, the parking lot—"

"Got it." She raised the glasses, then dropped them back into place. "You were right, Dr. Pines. You can't see him without the specs."

"Wait," Ford said. "I think he's visible again."

And at the same moment, much more loudly, Mabel called out, " _There_ you are! You took your _time!_ " Her voice wasn't much like Pacifica's, but she nailed the irritated inflection.

"Cousin?" asked the tall, good-looking guy coming toward her. "You gave your parents a fright. What was all that about?"

"Maybe about being pushed around too much," Mabel said defiantly. "And now you think you're gonna push me into _marrying_ you? _Puh-lease!_ "

"Marrying?" whispered Wendy. "Well—he's handsome, I'll give him that."

"I hate him," whispered Dipper.

Northby stepped toward Mabel with a peculiar kind of grace, cat-like, sinuous and confident. "Hear me out, Pacifica—may I call you Pacifica?"

"You may if you stop right where you stand. I can hear you fine, and you can hear me. If you've got anything to say, say it."

Wendy blew a pink bubble—she was chewing gum—and Dipper winced, but she didn't let it pop and silently pulled it back inside her mouth again.

Northby spread out his hands. "Let's face facts," he said. "My part of the family has some wealth. Your part has more. Neither side has as much as ten years ago. Our fortunes are, as they say in England, in decline. You and I could fix that. Put the Northwests back on top again, where we belong. All it will take is merging our fortunes." He chuckled. "Is the idea of marriage to me bothering you, Pacifica? It doesn't have to mean anything except words on paper, you know. We could go different ways. Or if you think you might learn to love me—I can be very lovable."

Dipper plucked Ford's sleeve, and when his great-uncle looked down, Dipper mimed fiddling with something and then pointed. Ford looked and nodded. The fingers of Northby's right hand were busy, as if he were tapping out a code on—yes, the ring. It glinted on his ring finger.

His nerves tingled, and Dipper had the sick feeling that things were about to spiral out of control. But Mabel seemed as confident as ever as she said, "Oh, _really?_ Tell me one thing that might make me trust you as much as—Thursby did, you _rat!"_

A rush and whir of scampering legs and beating wings cut off whatever else she was about to say. The sky storm-darkened, and a rush of animals of all kinds—possums, mice, raccoons, even foxes—stampeded past Dipper. He yelled "Longbow!"

Too late, though. The whirling cloud of birds surrounded and hid the two figures, and Dipper couldn't even see them. He ran forward, Wendy, axe in hand, loping beside him, Ford at his heels. Dipper was thinking, _Let the unicorn hair protect her! Let her be safe!_

Wings buffeted him, small furry bodies underfoot tripped him. Wendy grabbed his arm and dragged him up from a sprawling spill. They burst through a swarming wall of birds—

Dipper ripped the brush back—

Mabel was safe in the cage. She mouthed, "I'm OK!" though the clamor of the animals and birds kept Dipper from hearing her.

Above the racket of the birds and beasts, Dipper heard a weird roar. He turned on his heel and saw a bear, clad in torn rags of human clothing, rearing, standing where Northby Northwest had stood. Ford was shouting something he couldn't make out—but Wendy charged the beast.

It saw her coming and swung a heavy paw—she dodged it and struck out with her axe, swinging it in a wide arc and crunching it into the back of the left leg—butt-side, not blade-side, Dipper saw—and the bear staggered, roaring and swiping again. This time Wendy was a little too slow, and the paw caught her, sending her tumbling, though she held onto her axe. "Wendy!" Dipper yelled, kneeling beside her.

"'S OK!" She scrambled up to all fours, glaring at the bear. Now they seemed to stand in the eye of a hurricane of birds, the top open, but the cloud of feathered bodies locking them in a clear cylinder of air. The bear twisted and jerked weirdly. Its head became human before its body, and it shouted, "Kill you all!"

The changing bear stooped, reaching toward its ankle—

"Kill them!" Northby Northwest yelled in part-bear bellow, part-human shout, fumbling, trying to grasp something either on the ground or tied to the ankle of his injured leg—

"Not on my watch!" yelled a familiar voice, and Stanley Pines descended from the sky.

Literally.

He unclasped his parachute harness while still five feet above the startled Northwest and plummeted feet-first into him, toppling him. But Northwest got up first and with surprising speed he gave Stan a vicious kick to the head that spun him around and sent him sprawling. Wendy was on her feet and charged again, but Northwest anticipated and with another spin he knocked her legs from under her, still scrambling without success to grasp something.

"The stone!" Ford yelled. "Don't let him get a grip on the stone!"

Northby winced—his right leg was still in bear form. wobbling beneath him and obviously causing him great pain—and because of its length relative to his arms, he could not seem to find what he was reaching for. Someone yelled, "Hey, ugly!"

Pacifica, running through the swirling birds—which seemed to sweep around her without touching her.

Unicorn hair!

"We have riflemen!" the Professor, not as lucky as Pacifica, called out as he stumbled, the birds crashing into him.

Shaking, Northby stopped reaching for his ankle for a moment.

Stan danced in close, got in one good blow before the half-transformed Northwest struck him down. As Stan tumbled, Northwest snarled,"Fools! You can't fight me!"

But Stan seemed to disagree. He rose to his knees and then stood, and as he began to straighten, his fist clenched on a heavy pair of brass knuckles.

He put all the weight of thirty long years of frustration and regret in that fist. He put all the anger of having been disowned by his family, having been a failure at everything but the one thing that he most regretted, all the fury of a papa bear that had seen his cub attacked. He brought his fist up from the ground and up from the past and up from the hurt and his uppercut connected solidly with the underjaw that was now mostly human but partly bear, and he sent the dazed creature reeling.

Staggering, Northby shook his head and suddenly was almost fully himself again. "Think I can't escape?" he asked through bleeding lips. "I'm master of the earth, sea, and sky!" He threw back his arms, and from the very air around him feathers began to form as his shape twisted and the last scraps of clothing fell away from his form, not human or bear anymore, but more than halfway to becoming the body of an eagle.

Stan, bruised and bloody as he was, grinned in anticipation. He reached out and hauled Wendy back to her feet as she brandished her axe and breathed hard. "Hey, Wendy," Stan asked almost casually as Northby continued struggling to transform, "ya got a spare piece of bubblegum on ya?"

"Sorry, Stan," she growled, spitting out a pink wad. "Fresh out."

"Me, too," Stan said, grinning like a barracuda. "Well, I guess that just leaves us one thing to do."

"Gotcha." Wendy nodded and grinned back.

"OK, Wendy," Stan said. "Let's kick ass!"

Simultaneously they came at Northby from two directions, and he couldn't face them both. He had wings, not arms, now, though his torso was still partly human and he couldn't lift off—then his feet twisted into contorted orange talons, and hanging from the right one was a thong and a pouch.

"Wendy!" Dipper yelled, "Get that bag tied to his foot!"

"I'm on it!" Mabel yelled. Dipper realized she had opened the cage again and had run out. Something whizzed right past his ear.

Northby was all eagle at last, a huge one, and with heavy beats of his wings he leaped free of the earth—almost.

Something tethered him. "Grappling hook!" Mabel yelled, hanging on for all she was worth.

The hook had snagged Northby's right ankle. But he was powerful in eagle form, and to his horror, Dipper saw that he was going to lift Mabel right up in the air. "No!" He jumped and grabbed the line halfway between the eagle and his sister.

Their combined weight still wasn't enough to hold him earthbound, and Dipper found himself dangling some six feet from the ground. Someone grabbed Dipper's ankle—Wendy, holding on with her left hand! "Hang on, dude!" she shouted. For the first time since Weirdmageddon, Dipper saw her throw her axe—

And, incredibly, it spun true to her aim and sliced through the thong, and the pouch dropped. It was impossible to tell whether Northwest knew what had happened—he surged upward, even managing to lift all three of the kids off the ground—and then Pacifica said, "I got you, Mabel!"

Dipper dared a glance downward. Mabel held onto the grappling hook pistol beneath him, and Pacifica held onto both of Mabel's ankles, her own feet only inches off the ground.

And at last their combined weight paid off and Northby, despite his desperate clawing for altitude, began to descend.

"Mabel, let him go!" Ford shouted.

"Yeah!" Stan yelled. "It's OK! Trust my brother!"

"We're gonna hit hard," Mabel warned, but she retracted the hook.

Falling, Dipper crashed into Wendy, tumbled and hit his head on the ground, and then stumbled up flailing his arms, everything spinning around him. Stan grabbed his arm, steadying him. His Grunkle had his phone out. "Fiddleford, let 'er go!"

Dipper seemed to see two of everything: two Grunkle Stans, two Wendys, two Mabels—even two eagles soaring up into the sky—

No, one was going up, one coming down—

_No, the one in a power dive wasn't an eagle._

"OMG!" Pacifica screamed. "It's a _dinosaur!"_

"Pterodactyl!" Stan corrected.

"Pteranodon," Ford corrected the correction. "The two are always being confused with—"

"Can it, Poindexter, and watch!"

Whatever the ancient creature was, it was enormous, much larger than the eagle, which turned and fled.

But in an attack dive, the larger creature was also a great deal faster.

Dipper closed his eyes before the toothy reptilian jaws closed, but beside him Wendy said, "Yes!"

"He's a goner," Stan said.

The Professor—bleeding from beak and claw cuts and pressing a red-blotched handkerchief against the deepest wounds on his forehead—asked, "How do you know?"

"The birds and animals," Stan said. "They're leavin'."

"It— _ate_ him," Ford said. "And there it goes."

"Yep," cackled a familiar voice. Fiddleford McGucket had come running from the parking lot, shaking his head and staring upward at the reptile, now beating its wings as it soared up and flew away. "The bad guy's a goner, by cracky! And Professor, if you ask me how I know he's gone for good, I got four words for ya—He had no spoons!"

And as if that made as much sense as anything else that had happened, the Professor nodded as the frustrated snipers came out of the Shack and out of the woods.

* * *

 


	14. Rear-View Window

* * *

 

Dipper woke up panicking because he had no idea where he was—and then it came back: The hospital over in Hirschville. Grunkle Stan had driven Dipper over while he was still woozy, and Dr. le Fievre had shone lights in his eyes that seemed to lance right into his brain, had X-rayed his head, had touched the astonishing goose-egg bump on his forehead, and had said, "Concussion. Mild, I think. He looks OK, but, not to take any chances, I'm going to keep him overnight for observation."

So the unfamiliar bed was in a hospital. Now Mabel could no longer claim that she'd done something he hadn't—she'd spent one night in a hospital after eating a whole page of scratch-and-sniff stickers.

Up to that point, Dipper had only just cracked his eyes open and had registered that he was in a dim, unfamiliar room, had heard the soft beep of instruments attached to him, had smelled the unfamiliar scent of disinfectant. Then with a mild groan, he turned his head on the pillow and glimpsed someone slumped and dozing in a chair right beside the bed. "H-hi," he croaked, his throat dry.

Wendy jumped up, fully awake, and said, "Dipper! You feelin' better, man?"

"Wh-who are you?" Dipper asked weakly.

"Dude! Seriously?" She sounded not just concerned, but deeply worried. "Maybe I should ring for the nurse—"

"It's so dark," he whispered hoarsely. "I—I can't see. Could you—could you please come closer so I can see you?"

Wendy leaned down.

And Dipper threw his arms around her neck, pulled her down, and kissed her full on the mouth. After a startled instant when she almost pulled back, she leaned into him and kissed him back, chuckling at the same time. Dipper found that kissing a laughing girl was a wonderful sensation. When they broke apart, she gently stroked his hair and fondly scolded, "You dog! Didn't you think I might resent that?"

Dipper laughed, though his head hurt. "It was worth it, Red," he told her. RED? Where the heck did THAT come from?

"It's Wendy, remember?" She touched his cheek softly. "Not that I hate you givin' me a nickname or anything, you—you big Dipper, you."

Only then did Dipper see that she wore her left arm in a black sling. He sat up in bed. "Oh, my gosh, you're hurt! I'm so sorry I pulled on you like that! What happened?"

"What do you remember?"

Dipper squinted through the pulsing reddish haze of headache. "Uh—Mabel and her grappling hook. The eagle dragging us all along. And we were up the air, and I think you grabbed onto me, and then—Pacifica? Was she there? And then I think—we fell, didn't we? And that—that's pretty much all, except for later, and then I remember the doctor looking me over."

"Man," Wendy said, "you really took a knock, Dip! OK, so, yeah, my arm was out of the socket at the shoulder, but they popped it in. Hurts like the devil, but it'll be OK in a few days. You got a concussion. You remember Northby Northwest, don'tcha?"

"Yeah, kinda. He—he was trying to kill us all, wasn't he? He turned into—the eagle?"

"Right, and Fiddleford McGucket rigged up a remote control on the pterodactyl or pteranodon or pterosaur—him an' Stanley an' Stanford are still arguin' about what to call it—and Stan, like, rode the thing from its lair all the way to the Shack an' parachuted from it, see, an' him and me whipped Northby's a—butt until he tried to turn into an eagle an' fly away, an' then the flyin' lizard, like, totally ate him!"

"Oh," Dipper said. "Uh—I don't really remember much of it. It's like looking into a real foggy rear-view window—mirror, I mean. How'd our side do? Who was hurt?"

"You were the worst, man. Big ol' lump on your noggin. Stan is achy and cut up some, and I got this wrenched arm from tryin' to break my fall. Mabel hit an' rolled like a pro, so she came out of it without a bruise. Pacifica just got drug on the ground a little ways an' skinned her knees, an' she's, like, so proud of that! 'Cause she came runnin' out when she thought her creepy cousin was gonna kill us and she helped us drag him nearly outa the air before we fell."

"So basically everybody's OK?"

"Yeah, pretty much. The Professor had to have four stitches where the dang birds had cut his face so bad, but he's all right. The government guys an' Stanford took Pacifica home. Ford said her dad cried like a little baby an' hugged her an' there was, like, a big family reunion scene. Mr. Northwest swears he's gonna be a better dad to her from now on, and her mom apologized for havin' gone along with the agents' plan to protect her, but it's OK, they're cool now. They all said good riddance to Northby, though."

"He's dead," Dipper said, his voice a little tight. "I don't know how I feel about that. Up to now, we never really tried to kill anything. Well, I did chop your axe into the Shapeshifter, but he'd hurt you, and anyway he's hard to kill. And Grunkle Stan punched out Bill Cipher. But Northby Northwest wasn't a monster, just a human playing around with magic."

"Not a monster? Well, Dip, he killed his college friend and his own granddad, and he had some crazy scheme to force Pacifica into marryin' him, or else he was gonna kill all the Northwests out here an' claim their money as his inheritance. The government guys dreamed up that fake fall from the water tower to keep Pacifica safe while they played for time. See, they were just interested in gettin' that ring back. It's a valuable museum artifact, they say. Only the flyin' lizard's got it now."

"Yeah, I guess Northby must've had it on him to change forms and all."

"Fiddleford says it'll reappear in four or five days when the ptero-whatever poops, and he knows where to dig it out. The Professor guy has promised a reward for its return, but if anybody knows where it's been, they prob'ly wouldn't want to put it on their finger! Oh, and Ford has that little gem that was in the pouch that I cut off Northby's leg. You remember that?"

"Umm. . . yeah, it's coming back," Dipper said. "Great shot with your axe!"

"Thanks. That gemstone was the doodad that let Northby be invisible as a human or as an animal."

"Or a fish," Dipper said. "Hey, Wendy, I see it now—Northby was one of the birds that attacked the Northwest limousine, but then he turned into a fish in the stream to hang around where nobody would find him. He was probably wondering what had happened to Pacifica and wanted to wait and see if she showed up! Then when we came across him, he turned invisible, but great-uncle Ford explained why we could see his shadow anyway, and he scared the fish away. Man, it's complicated. Umm, thinking makes my head ache!"

"Want me to ask the nurse if you can have something for it, dude?"

Dipper frowned thoughtfully. "I think . . . I think I need . . . I think what would really help . . . is some mouth-to-mouth resuscitation."

She punched his arm, just a very light and playful tap. "Dude, you can't fool a Corduroy twice! No mouth to mouth."

"Aw, Red," he said, grinning.

"You really are gettin' to be kind of a bad boy," she said firmly. But then she smiled. "No mouth to mouth, but how about a friendly little kiss?"

So he happily settled for that.

* * *

Stanley sprang him from the hospital that afternoon, and he drove Dipper back to the Shack. Soos, Melody, and Abuelita had returned, and the place was open for business as usual, but Mabel was running the register.

"Hiya, bro-bro!" she said. "Wah-wow! Look at your black eyes!" She whipped out her phone and snapped a photo. "Scapbook-portunity! Wolf boy, my foot! You're Raccoon Lad now!"

"Wait, what? I've got black eyes?"

Mabel found a mirror and held it up. _Do I ever have black eyes! I'm glad Mom and Dad can't see me right now!_ He said, "Uh, Mabel, don't show that picture to our folks before I can think up a way to explain it, OK?"

"You got it."

"Where—where is Wendy?"

"Sleepin', dawg," Soos said. "Gave her the day off. She, like, stayed up all night long watchin' over you."

"Yeah," Stan said with a laugh. "The nurses told her visitin' hours were over, and she told them where to get off. Dunno if she pulled her axe on 'em or what, but she made 'em back down an' they let her stay. Dipper, take it from me—that girl's a keeper."

"Aw," Mabel said, snapping another photo of Dipper. "Raccoon Lad's so cute when he blushes!"

Stanford emerged from his lab, asked about Dipper's condition, and when Dipper assured him, "I'm OK, except for the fact that everything hurts," his great-uncle at last said he'd answer the questions Dipper had kept trying to blurt out.

"What are you gonna do with that magic stone?"

Stanford sighed. "Well, on its own, the Stone of Summoning is practically powerless. It must be used in conjunction with the Ring of Solomon. It gives the bearer mental control over the animals the Ring calls. If Northwest had managed to grasp it in his left hand while the Ring was on his right, none of us would be alive now. The animals and birds he controlled would have murdered us. I mean, under his mental control, even a flock of ducks nibbled a man to death!"

"What a cute and horrifying way to die," Mabel said. "Hah. Ducks. Quack-quack!"

Stanford nodded. "Cute and horrifying indeed! I'm going to hide the stone away, perhaps in the same spot where the Shapeshifter is imprisoned—"

"NO!" Stan, Mabel, and Dipper yelled all at once.

"You could be right," Stanford said slowly. "Well, I know three more extremely secure places. I won't even tell you about them, but I'll choose one. I'd simply destroy the thing, but—well, it's ancient, it's magical, and it doesn't _have_ to be used for evil. And on its own, it's harmless."

And there matters rested. Pacifica came over the next day, cooed sympathetically over Dipper's black eyes, and said with a sigh that now she had only fifth and sixth cousins, apparently. "Fortunately, none of them seem to be, like, evil _geniuses_ ," she added.

Dipper said, "They told me you came running out to help us when you didn't have to, Pacifica. That was pretty brave of you. Thanks. You're really a nice person."

Pacifica teared up. "No, I'm not," she said, sniffling. "I'm just trying to be."

Mabel patted her shoulder. "That's all anybody can do, Pacifica! You never get to be as nice as you'd like to be. You just have to keep trying, every day of your life."

Dipper said slowly, "It's kinda like this. A wise someone once told me that knowledge isn't something you can hold in your hand. It's a horizon to be pursued. You never get there, but the trip is worth it."

"OK," Pacifica said. "You guys keep me on track though, all right? 'Cause I don't always seem to have a great sense of direction. Oh, hey, look at my _knees!_ I never got skinned knees before!"

"'Cause you always hired somebody else to get them for you," Mabel said.

"Hey!" Pacifica returned, making her gyaaah face—but then she blinked and started to laugh, and Dipper and Mabel joined in.

It hurt Dipper's head a little. But it was worth it.

* * *

_The End_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple of things:
> 
> First, the flying lizard isn't a pterodactyl or a pteranodon, either. They didn't have the choppers for it—no teeth. Really, it's a pterosaur, probably pterosaurus hollywoodus, or an imaginary movie monster. In reality, the danged things weren't even dinosaurs, but lizards! I have the word of an actual paleontologist on this.
> 
> But most important, this whole story is built on a bunch of puns and elements inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's movies: For example, the stranger in Chapter 1 who is fond of Hitchcock's musical theme ("Funeral March of a Marionette") makes a cameo just as Hitchcock did in almost every film he made; and the fall from the tower and Mabel's masquerading as Pacifica are references to the movie Vertigo, one of the director's best; and the bird attack is a reference to The Birds (Ford even mentions that a similar phenomenon once occurred in Bodega Bay, the setting for that movie); and the character named Northby Northwest is a tip of the hat to the Hitchcock film North by Northwest, starring Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint, and so on and so forth. As Bill would say, I have lots of references in the story. Lo-o-ots of references!
> 
> By the way, I "hear" the guy's name as "Northbee." That's how the name should be pronounced. Word of the author.
> 
> And as to the movies-Titles of Hitchcock films referenced as the story and chapter titles:
> 
> The Man Who Knew Too Much
> 
> Suspicion
> 
> The Birds
> 
> Shadow of a Doubt
> 
> The Lady Vanishes
> 
> Dial M for Murder
> 
> Vertigo
> 
> Sabotage
> 
> Strangers on a Train
> 
> Frenzy
> 
> Family Plot
> 
> To Catch a Thief
> 
> North by Northwest
> 
> Psycho
> 
> Rear Window
> 
> Why'd I do such a goofy thing?
> 
> It just struck me that Gravity Falls is the perfect setting for a Hitchcockian mystery. The plot, I know, is very loose—but that’s because I was just stringing elements together.


End file.
